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To Dress Salt Cod

Salt cod served with egg sauce and parsnips in cream and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Dress Salt Cod

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak the salt cod in water overnight with vinegar to remove the salt.

  2. Boil the cod until cooked through.

  3. Serve the cod with egg sauce and boiled or mashed parsnips mixed with cream and butter.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Sauce + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Sauce + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Sauce and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Main protein; salt is drawn out by soaking, leaving flaky, tender fish.
Parsnips
Natural sugars add gentle sweetness, and mashing gives a soft, smooth texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the mashed parsnips.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a silky mouthfeel to the parsnips.

The step that matters

Soaking the salt cod overnight. Salt cod is heavily cured, and soaking draws out the salt and rehydrates the fish. Soaking too briefly leaves the cod overly salty and tough, so the fish stays too firm and the seasoning too strong to enjoy.

Swap the parsnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, sauce, cream, butter. 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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