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Cod Sound, Fricasseed

A cod fricassee with cod, white stock, coarse sea salt, black pepper, ground mace, butter, flour, lemon juice, served with toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cod Sound, Fricasseed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Soak, scrape, and boil the cod sounds until tender, about 30 minutes.

  2. Drain the cod sounds and place them in a stewpan.

Make the sauce

  1. Add enough white stock to cover the cod sounds.

  2. Season the sauce with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and ground mace.

  3. Thicken the sauce with a lump of butter rolled in flour.

  4. Just before serving, squeeze in the juice of a lemon.

Serve

  1. Serve with toasted sippets.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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
Provide the main body of the dish, becoming tender when simmered.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds body when worked with flour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it a smooth body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with a lump of butter rolled in flour. Flour must be cooked into the hot liquid and whisked or stirred as the butter melts, or the sauce can turn lumpy and taste floury.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

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