Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Cod’s Tongues with Black-butter Sauce
Ingredients
Directions
Blanch the Cod's tongues and place them in a saucepan with the liquor. Heat gently without boiling.
Drain well and dress on a hot dish.
Pour the black butter sauce over the tongues.
Decorate with sprigs of parsley and serve.
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.
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Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together15,338 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
-
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together28,563 recipes
Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
-
Sauce + parsleytop 23% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together6,693 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 tongues
- Provide the delicate, flaky fish that is the main component of the dish.
- Black-butter sauce
- Adds rich, nutty, slightly tangy flavour that coats the fish.
The step that matters
Heat gently without boiling. Boiling toughens the delicate protein of the fish, making it firm and dry. Keeping the liquor just below a boil cooks the tongues gently and keeps them tender and moist.
Swap the parsley
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, sauce):
- Capersfits better
- Tarragonfits about as well
- Parsleythe original
- Nutmegfits about as well
Fit is the average pairing score against butter, sauce. 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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