Why it works: Bread and butter match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 27,145 recipes mention both. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓
The recipe
Ingredients
Contains: egg, milk, wheat, fish, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the sounds
Wash the cod sounds thoroughly.
Boil the sounds in a mixture of milk and water until just tender, then let them cool.
Make the forcemeat
Prepare a forcemeat by mixing chopped oysters, bread crumbs, butter, nutmeg, pepper, salt, and egg yolks.
Spread the forcemeat thinly over the sounds and roll them up to resemble chickens, securing with skewers.
Lard the rolled sounds as you would with chickens and dust lightly with flour.
Roast and serve
Roast in a 300°F (150°C) oven until cooked through.
Serve with oyster sauce as a side or corner dish.
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.
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Bread + buttertop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together27,145 recipes
Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
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Milk + buttertop 3% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together81,222 recipes
Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
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Nutmeg + peppertop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together13,015 recipes
Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
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Milk + breadtop 4% of all pairsAroma overlapstrongMentioned together11,363 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
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Oyster + breadtop 5% of all pairsAroma overlapmoderateMentioned together2,544 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Cod sounds
- Form the main body that is poached, stuffed, rolled and roasted into the dish.
- Egg yolks
- Bind the forcemeat so it holds together around the sounds while roasting.
- Bread crumbs
- Add bulk and absorb moisture so the oyster forcemeat stays spreadable and firm.
- Butter
- Adds fat and richness to the forcemeat and helps it brown in the oven.
- Chopped oysters
- Provide the savoury, briny flavour of the forcemeat filling.
The step that matters
Boil the sounds until just tender. Overcooking makes the delicate fish tough and dry, and it will cook further in the oven, so stop once it is just tender.
Flavor stand-ins for the nutmeg
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, oyster, bread, butter, pepper, egg, flour):
- Nutmegthe original
- Parsleyabout as good a flavor fit
- Cinnamonabout as good a flavor fit
Fit is the average pairing score against milk, oyster, bread, butter, pepper, egg, flour. 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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