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Fried Salt Cod

Fried salt cod served with a cream sauce thickened with corn starch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and corn are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 25% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,532 recipes. Both carry 2-heptanol, which smells bitter, floral. The science ↓

Fried Salt Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Soak the salt cod squares in plenty of water overnight.

  2. Peel off the skin and wipe the fish dry.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry the fish in hot, fresh lard until golden brown, then remove from the pan.

  2. Clean the pan.

  3. Pour in the cream and thicken with corn starch.

  4. Add salt to taste.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish.

  2. 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. Cream + corntop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-heptanol (bitter, floral).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt cod
Is the main protein; soaking draws out salt so the fish can be eaten.
Fresh lard
Conducts heat for frying and gives the fish a golden, crisp surface.
Cream
Forms the rich, smooth body of the sauce.
Corn starch
Thickens the cream into a sauce by swelling when heated.

The step that matters

Thicken the cream with corn starch. Corn starch must be heated in the liquid to swell and thicken it; if it is added to cold cream or boiled too little, the sauce stays thin or turns lumpy.

“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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