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To Boil Salt Codfish

A boiled salt codfish served with hard‑boiled eggs, mashed potatoes, boiled parsnips, and a mustard‑cayenne sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Boil Salt Codfish

Ingredients

Directions

Soak and cook the fish

  1. Soak the salt codfish in cold water, keeping it warm by the fire.

  2. Scrub the fish clean.

  3. Place the fish in a kettle of fresh cold water with ½ cup molasses.

  4. Keep the kettle near the fire until 20 minutes before dinner.

  5. Boil the fish hard for about 15 minutes.

  6. Drain the fish and cut it into large pieces.

  7. Wrap the fish in a fine napkin.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish on a large dish, garnished with hard‑boiled eggs cut in half or sliced.

  2. Prepare egg sauce with drawn butter thickened with finely chopped hard‑boiled eggs.

  3. Serve mashed potatoes on one side of the fish and boiled parsnips on the other.

Use leftovers

  1. For leftovers, mince the fish with mashed potatoes, parsnips, and egg sauce, seasoning with cayenne and mustard.

  2. Warm the dish in a buttered skillet.

  3. Make small cakes and fry.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Parsnip + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together89 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Potato + parsniptop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together353 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Salt codfish
Provides the main body of the dish, softened by soaking and boiling.
Molasses
Adds sweetness to the water the fish is cooked in.
Hard-boiled eggs
Garnish and thickening base for the egg sauce, adding richness.
Butter
Enriches the drawn butter sauce and adds fat for flavour and richness.
Mashed potatoes
Adds starchy body and a soft texture alongside the fish.

The step that matters

Boil the fish hard for about 15 minutes. Salt codfish must be soaked and then cooked to tenderise firm, salty flesh. Boiling too briefly leaves it tough, while overcooking makes it dry and stringy.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (molasses, egg, potato, parsnip, pepper, mustard, butter):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against molasses, egg, potato, parsnip, pepper, mustard, butter. 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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