Skip to main content
Main

Salt Fish, to Cook

Salted cod cooked with a butter‑flour‑milk sauce, boiled egg, mashed potatoes, parsley, onion, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Salt Fish, to Cook

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut the fish into convenient pieces.

  2. Soak the fish overnight in cold water.

  3. Scrape the skin until white or remove it entirely.

  4. Place the fish in a stew-pan covered with cold water.

  5. Boil for 45 minutes or longer if very hard.

  6. Drain the fish.

  7. Wipe the dish dry.

Make the sauce

  1. Boil the egg for 10 minutes. Chop the boiled egg.

  2. Melt the butter in a small saucepan. Stir in 2 teaspoons of flour over heat. Add the milk. Stir until it boils.

  3. Mix in the chopped egg.

  4. Pour the mixture over the fish.

  5. Serve.

Make and assemble the pudding

  1. Boil about 9 potatoes. Mash the potatoes smoothly.

  2. Add a little milk to moisten the mash.

  3. Spread 3 spoonfuls of mashed potatoes on the bottom of a small pudding dish.

  4. Add the fish, broken into flakes.

  5. Sprinkle with chopped parsley and onion.

  6. Add ½ teaspoon of mustard made with vinegar and small bits of butter.

  7. Cover with the remaining mashed potatoes. Smooth the top.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 ling or cod
Forms the flaky main body of the dish after soaking and boiling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce and mustard layer.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter and milk into a smooth sauce.
Milk
Makes the sauce liquid and moistens the potato mash.
Egg
Adds body and richness to the sauce once chopped in.

The step that matters

Soaking the salt cod. Salt cod is very salty and firm, so soaking it long enough in cold water draws out salt and softens the flesh. Under-soaking leaves the dish harsh and tough, while the later boiling only finishes the softening.

“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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes