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To Fricassee Cod Sounds and Tongues

A fricassee of cod tongues simmered in milk, seasoned with nutmeg, pepper, and sea salt, finished with a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Fricassee Cod Sounds and Tongues

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Soak the cod tongues in fresh water overnight.

  2. Remove the skins and cut them into two pieces.

  3. Boil the pieces in a mixture of milk and water until tender.

  4. Drain in a colander and season with nutmeg, pepper, and a little coarse sea salt.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate bowl, mix a good lump of butter with flour.

  2. Melt the butter‑flour mixture in the milk to create a sauce.

  3. Combine the sauce with the cod tongues.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Cod sounds and tongues
Form the main body of the dish, giving it a tender, flaky bite once cooked.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and with flour forms the base that thickens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and milk, giving it body.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce and adds creamy richness.

The step that matters

Melt the butter-flour mixture in the milk to create a sauce. Flour needs to be cooked in the hot liquid so its starch swells and thickens evenly; adding it in lumps or without enough heating leaves a pasty, raw-tasting sauce.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits about as well
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Cardamomfits about as well
  4. Parsleyfits about as well

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