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Salt Fish with Parsnips

Salt fish simmered with parsnips and a butter‑flour sauce, optionally garnished with chopped hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsnip and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 669 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Salt Fish with Parsnips

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the salt fish in cold water for at least 12 hours.

  2. Boil the soaked fish in plenty of cold water without any salt until thoroughly cooked.

  3. Drain the fish well and place it on a dish with well-boiled parsnips.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, mix the butter and flour in a saucepan with pepper, coarse sea salt, vinegar, and water, then stir the mixture over heat until it boils.

  2. If desired, chop hard-boiled eggs and mix them into 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. Parsnip + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together669 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Parsnip + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,109 recipes

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

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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 fish
Main protein; soaking and boiling remove most of its salt so it can be eaten.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce, carrying flavour and giving it a smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it heats with the butter, giving it body.
Parsnips
Provide the sweet, starchy vegetable base that the fish is served on.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the sauce and balances the rich butter and fish.

The step that matters

Soaking the salt fish. Salt fish must soak long enough to draw out excess salt; too short a soak leaves the fish overly salty, while boiling it without added salt keeps the final dish from being salted twice.

Swap the parsnip

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

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