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To Dress Salt Fish

A dressing for salted fish made with vinegar, spices, butter, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Dress Salt Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the salt fish and soak it in fresh water overnight.

Cook

  1. Place the fish in a fish kettle and sprinkle with ground cloves, pepper, garlic, coarse sea salt, and sweet herbs.

  2. Add 1 pint of vinegar to the kettle.

  3. Roll the butter in flour and place small pieces over the fish.

  4. Simmer for half an hour.

  5. Remove the fish and pour the gravy over it.

  6. Garnish with parsley.

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

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

  2. Garlic + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Pepper + garlictop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,090 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salt fish
Forms the main body of the dish, carrying its savory flavor.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the rich butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, enriching the gravy as it melts.
Flour
Coats the butter so it thickens the gravy as it melts and cooks.

The step that matters

Simmer for half an hour. Simmering gently keeps the fish tender and lets the vinegar and butter blend into the gravy. A hard boil can toughen the fish and break the butter-flour mixture into a greasy, uneven sauce.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, vinegar, pepper, garlic, butter, flour, parsley. 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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