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Cod’s Sounds Broiled with Gravy

Broiled cod fillets served with a mustard‑butter gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,430 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Cod’s Sounds Broiled with Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the sounds

  1. Scald the cod's sounds in hot water.

  2. Rub them well with coarse sea salt and remove the dirty skin.

  3. Place them in cold water and simmer until tender.

Broil the fish

  1. Remove them, coat with flour, and broil until cooked.

Make the gravy

  1. Prepare gravy by boiling good gravy, mustard, butter rolled in flour, and seasoning with pepper and salt.

Serve

  1. Lay the broiled sounds in a dish and pour the sauce over them.

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. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Flour and butter 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's sounds
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender when gently simmered in water.
Flour
Coats the fish so its surface browns and crisps under the broiler.
Butter
Adds richness, and with flour it forms a roux that thickens the gravy.
Gravy
Forms the sauce base, giving savory flavor and moisture to the dish.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavor that cuts through the richness of the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the butter and flour thoroughly in the gravy. Flour must be fully cooked in the boiling liquid to thicken the sauce smoothly and remove its raw, pasty taste.

Swap the mustard

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

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