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To Boil Cod’s Sounds and Tongues

A boiled cod dish featuring the fish's sounds and tongues, served with egg sauce and optional oyster stuffing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,062 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

To Boil Cod’s Sounds and Tongues

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the cod's sounds and tongues in warm milk and water for 3-4 hours.

  2. Scrape and clean them thoroughly.

Cook and serve

  1. Place them in a saucepan with fresh milk and water, then boil gently until tender.

  2. Serve with egg sauce and garnish with fried parsley or shredded horseradish.

Stuffed version

  1. For a stuffed version, fill half-boiled sounds with a mixture of chopped oysters, bread crumbs, egg yolks, and seasonings, then skewer them closed.

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. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Horseradish + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together389 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Sauce + horseradishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together775 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Cod's sounds and tongues
Provide the main delicate, flaky protein that becomes tender when gently simmered.
Egg yolks
Enrich the stuffing and help bind it, adding richness and a smooth texture.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body so it holds its shape.
Oysters
Add briny flavour and moisture to the stuffing mixture.

The step that matters

Boil gently until tender. A rolling boil toughens delicate fish proteins and can break the tissue apart, so a gentle simmer keeps the texture tender and intact.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, egg, sauce, horseradish, oyster, bread, nutmeg):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Allspicefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sauce, horseradish, oyster, bread, nutmeg. 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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