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How to Clean Salt-fish

A method for removing salt from cod or ling by soaking, scrubbing, draining, and rinsing with vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 26% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,036 recipes. Both carry acetoin, which smells butter, cream. The science ↓

How to Clean Salt-fish

Ingredients

Directions

Soak and clean

  1. Soak the salt-fish fully immersed in water for at least 12 hours.

  2. Scrub the fish with a hard brush or coarse cloth.

  3. Drain the fish on a flat stone or board for 6 to 8 hours.

Desalt

  1. Soak the fish in lukewarm water for 10 to 12 hours until pliant and tender.

  2. Add a little vinegar to the soaking water to help extract salt.

  3. If soaking overnight, add ⅓ cup of vinegar to the water.

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. Fish + vinegartop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,036 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetoin (butter, cream).

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 rehydrated by soaking before use.
Vinegar
Acidity in the soaking water that helps draw salt out of the fish.

The step that matters

Soaking time and water changes. Salt-fish must soak long enough for salt to diffuse out of the flesh; too short leaves it overly salty, while the fish gradually softens and becomes pliant as it rehydrates.

“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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