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Salt Fish

A dish of flaked cooked fish simmered in a butter, water, flour sauce, seasoned with pepper, salt, parsley, and lemon or chili vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Salt Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Flake the cooked fish off the bones and remove the skin.

Make the sauce

  1. In a clean saucepan, melt the butter with water and flour over low heat.

  2. Add pepper, salt, and minced parsley to the butter mixture.

  3. Heat the fish slowly in the sauce, stirring until well mixed.

  4. If using, add lemon juice or chili vinegar just before serving.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish in a deep dish with a border of mashed parsnips or potatoes.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + parsniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Flour + parsniptop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and gives it a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water into a light sauce that clings to the fish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter sauce just before serving.

The step that matters

Heating the fish slowly in the sauce. Gentle heat keeps the flaked fish tender and stops the flour-thickened sauce from scorching or breaking, while the fish warms through.

Swap the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, butter, flour, pepper, parsley, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits about as well
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, butter, flour, pepper, parsley, lemon. 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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