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Salt Fish

Salt Fish is a preserved fish prepared by soaking, washing, simmering, and served with parsley, lemon, boiled parsnips, and egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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. Soak the salt fish in cold water for 12 hours.

  2. Wash the fish well in fresh water, then scrape and clean it.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the fish in a fish kettle and cover with cold water.

  2. Simmer gently for 1 to 1.5 hours, depending on thickness.

  3. Serve on a cloth, garnished with parsley and lemon slices.

  4. Accompany with boiled parsnips and egg sauce.

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. Lemon + parsniptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together172 recipes

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

  4. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

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

  5. Fish + parsleytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt fish
Is the main ingredient, preserved by salting, and it is softened by soaking before cooking.
Boiled parsnips
Provide a sweet, starchy side that balances the salty, rich fish.
Egg sauce
Adds richness and a creamy texture that moistens the mild, flaky fish.

The step that matters

Simmer gently. Boiling vigorously can toughen and break up the fish, while gentle simmering cooks it evenly and keeps it moist and flaky. Cooking time should follow thickness.

Swap the parsnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, parsley, lemon, 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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