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Cod Sounds Fricasseed

A cod fricassee made with milk, water, white stock, mace, salt, pepper, butter, flour, lemon pickle, and toasted bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cod Sounds Fricasseed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cod

  1. Clean the cod.

  2. Boil them in equal parts milk and water.

  3. Drain the cod.

Make the fricassee

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cod with white stock seasoned with mace, coarse sea salt, and white pepper.

  2. Thicken the mixture with butter kneaded into flour.

  3. Just before serving, stir in lemon pickle.

  4. Garnish with slices of thin toasted bread.

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

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provides the main body of the dish as a firm, flaky protein.
Butter kneaded into flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, rich sauce as the flour starch sets.
White stock
Forms the savoury liquid base that carries the seasoning and cooks the fish.
Lemon pickle
Adds sharp acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the mixture with butter kneaded into flour. Flour must be fully worked into the butter and whisked into the hot stock, or lumps form. Starch granules swell and set the sauce only when they are evenly dispersed and heated, so the sauce thickens smoothly.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, mace, 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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