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Salt Cod a LA Maitre D’ Hétel

Salt cod cooked in a butter‑flour sauce with lemon, parsley, and seasonings, served with fried potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 Cod a LA Maitre D’ Hétel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the salt cod in cold water to remove excess salt.

  2. Place the fish in a large pot of cold water and bring to a boil.

  3. Once boiling, remove from heat and cover to keep warm.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and whisk in the flour.

  2. Add water and season with salt and pepper, stirring until thickened.

  3. Mix in chopped parsley, lemon juice, and adjust seasoning if needed.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove skin and bones from the fish and gently fold it into the sauce.

  2. Serve in a deep dish or vol au vent, garnished with fried potatoes.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Forms the main body of the dish, providing its flaky texture and savory flavor.
Butter
Enriches the sauce, adding fat, body and a silky mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the fish to the sauce. Salt cod must be fully desalted and boned before folding it in, since leftover salt or bones will overpower the sauce and spoil the texture. Gentle folding keeps the flakes intact.

“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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