Name: Cod Sounds and Tongues
Ingredients: cod sounds; white stock; coarse sea salt; black pepper; powdered mace; butter; flour; lemon juice

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

Soak, scrape, and boil the cod sounds as needed.
Drain and place them in a stew pan with enough white stock to cover.
Season the sauce with coarse sea salt, black pepper, and powdered mace.
Thicken the sauce with a lump of butter rolled in flour.
Just before serving, squeeze in the juice of a lemon.

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.

Pepper + lemontop 2% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together27,039 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pepper + macetop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlapmoderate

Mentioned together12,257 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).
Butter + flourtop 6% of all pairs

Aroma overlaplow

Mentioned together122,858 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Mace + lemontop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together6,314 recipes

Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).
Butter + lemontop 8% of all pairs

Aroma overlapstrong

Mentioned together41,197 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

Butter and flour share little aroma chemistry, yet 122,858 recipes mention both: they likely work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

Flavor stand-ins for the mace

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

Parsleybetter flavor fit
Marjorambetter flavor fit
Thymebetter flavor fit
Macethe original

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