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To Dbess Salt Fish

A salted ling fish prepared with parsnips, milk, butter, and hard boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Dbess Salt Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the old ling in water for 12 hours.

  2. Lay the fish on a board for 12 hours, then soak it in water for another 12 hours.

  3. Place the fish in cold water and boil gently for 15 minutes.

Make the parsnips

  1. Boil the parsnips until tender, then scrape them.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the scraped parsnips with milk and stir until thick.

  3. Stir in a good piece of butter and a little coarse sea salt.

Serve

  1. Serve the parsnips on a plate with the fish, butter, and chopped hard boiled eggs.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Fish + milktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Old ling (salt fish)
Salted and soaked fish provides the main savoury flavour and firm, flaky texture.
Parsnips
Starchy body that softens when boiled and thickens into a smooth purée with milk.
Milk
Liquid that combines with the mashed parsnips to make them smooth and creamy.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silkier mouthfeel to the parsnips.
Hard boiled eggs
Egg proteins set firm when cooked, adding a soft, mild contrast to the fish.

The step that matters

Soaking the salt fish. Salt fish must be soaked long enough to draw out excess salt, since under-soaking leaves the fish too salty and tough. Changing the water helps the salt diffuse out of the flesh.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, milk, butter, egg. 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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