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Pie of Cod Sounds

A baked pie made with cod heads simmered in a sauce of onions, butter, flour, wine, and lemon, topped with crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,039 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the cod

  1. Soak the cod sounds in blood warm water with salt and vinegar for 24 hours.

  2. Wash and dry the sounds.

Make the sauce

  1. In a stew pan, fry the onions in butter until brown.

  2. Mix flour with a little butter.

  3. Add the mixture to the onions with boiling water until smooth.

  4. Add the cod sounds, pepper, salt, white wine, essence of anchovies, and lemon juice.

  5. Stir well.

  6. Simmer for a few moments.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer to a pie dish.

  2. Cover with pie crust and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 1 hour.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + white winetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. White wine + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together3,764 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Vinegar + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,123 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  5. Onion + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together4,426 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cod sounds
Provide the flaky fish body that forms the filling of the pie.
Onions
Brown in butter to add sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when frying the onions and thickening the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce that binds the filling.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich, savoury sauce.
Pie crust
Encloses the filling and browns in the oven to form a golden top.

The step that matters

Frying the onions until brown. Browning onions in butter develops deep, sweet flavour through caramelisation; pale onions leave the sauce tasting flat. Stop before they burn, since scorched butter turns bitter.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  3. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, butter, flour, pepper, white wine, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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