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To Dress Salt Cod

A salt cod dish dressed with a creamy parsnip sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 669 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

To Dress Salt Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

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

  2. Boil the cod until cooked, then break it into flakes on a serving dish.

Make the parsnip cream

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

  2. In a saucepan, combine the mashed parsnips with cream, butter, and flour.

  3. Heat the mixture until combined.

Serve

  1. Pour the parsnip mixture over the cod and serve.

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. Parsnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Parsnip + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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 cod
Provides the main protein and savoury flavour of the dish.
Parsnips
Mashed, they form the smooth, body-giving base of the cream.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the parsnip mixture a silky texture.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the parsnip mixture so it holds together rather than running.

The step that matters

Soaking the salt cod. Salt cod is very salty and must soak long enough to draw out excess salt before cooking. Under-soaking leaves the fish harsh and overly salty, while the cream sauce cannot balance it.

Swap the parsnip

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, cream, butter, flour, pepper. 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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