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Pish, Salt, and Parsnips

Salt cod simmered with egg sauce and served with boiled parsnips.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and sauce work together. They rank in the top 23% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 156 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Pish, Salt, and Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the fish and soak it in cold water for 12 hours, changing the water every 3 or 4 hours.

  2. Cover the fish with cold water and bring it slowly to a simmer.

  3. Cook gently for 20 minutes, or until the fish separates from the bones.

Finish the dish

  1. Meanwhile, prepare the egg sauce as directed.

  2. Boil the parsnips; if small, cut them lengthwise, or into 4 pieces if large.

  3. Drain the fish well, place it on a hot dish, pour the sauce over, and garnish with the parsnips.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsnip + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together156 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Parsnip + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together442 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  3. Egg + saucetop 39% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,895 recipes

Egg and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,895 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Salt cod
Provides the main flaky protein; soaking removes salt so the fish can be eaten.
Parsnips
Add natural sweetness and a soft, tender texture when boiled.
Egg sauce
Adds richness and body, as egg yolks thicken and emulsify the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the fish gently. Bringing the fish to a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil keeps its flesh tender and in large flakes. Vigorous boiling toughens the protein and breaks the fish apart.

Swap the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, sauce):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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