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To Dbess Salt Cod

A salt cod dish prepared by debossing the fish and serving it with a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 Dbess Salt Cod

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Soak the salt cod in cold water until the salt is removed.

  2. Bring the water to a boil, then remove from heat and let the fish sit in the water until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter, then whisk in the flour and a few spoonfuls of water, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  2. Heat the mixture until just boiling, then remove from heat and stir until smooth.

  3. Add chopped parsley and thick cream if available.

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the bones from the fish and combine it with the sauce before serving.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they 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

Salt cod
Provides the main flesh, which must be desalted before cooking.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour through its fat.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water into a smooth sauce.
Thick cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce when used.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce only until just boiling. Flour thickens as its starch swells with heat, but overheating or boiling hard can leave the sauce lumpy or thin. Removing it from heat and stirring keeps it smooth.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, pepper, cream):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, pepper, cream. 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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