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Morue Salee a LA Maitre d'Hitel

Salted cod simmered gently, then served in a sauce of butter, flour, water, sea salt, pepper, parsley, lemon, glaze, and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 14,036 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Poach the cod

  1. Remove the salt from the salted cod and place it in a large vessel with water, ensuring it does not boil.

  2. As soon as the water begins to boil, remove the vessel from the heat. Cover the vessel to keep the fish tender.

  3. Remove the skin and bones from the fish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pan, melt a good lump of butter. Add 2 tablespoons of flour to the butter.

  2. Add 4-5 tablespoons of water to the mixture. Add a little coarse sea salt to the mixture.

  3. Taste the sauce and adjust with more salt and black pepper if needed.

  4. Heat the sauce again without boiling.

  5. Once the sauce thickens, stir it well to make it smooth.

  6. Mix a pinch of chopped parsley with a little glaze and the juice of a lemon. Taste the sauce.

  7. If the sauce is too brown, add a little thick cream to lighten it.

Bake and serve

  1. Gently add the fish to the sauce, shaking it carefully to avoid breaking the fish.

  2. Serve in a vol-au-vent or a deep dish with croutons.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,036 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

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

  4. Butter + creamtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together41,494 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together122,858 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely 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

Salted cod
Forms the main body of the dish, flaking into the sauce as the fish's flesh is the centrepiece.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavour, forming the base for the roux.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter sauce.
Thick cream
Lightens the colour and softens the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the water below a boil when poaching the cod. Gentle heat keeps the fish flesh tender and in flakes; boiling toughens and breaks it apart, which is also why the fish is added to the sauce gently.

“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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