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Cop-HEAD Soup

A soup made from a cod head, rice, onion, carrot, pepper, salt, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Cop-HEAD Soup

Oven, in the book's wordsA good oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Wash the cod head and place it in 4 quarts of cold water.

  2. Boil for 1 hour, then strain the soup through a sieve.

Finish the soup

  1. Add ¾ cup of rice, 1 chopped onion, and 1 chopped carrot to the soup.

  2. Simmer for nearly 1 hour.

  3. Add all the fish from the head, season with pepper, salt, and chopped parsley, and serve.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Rice + carrottop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,477 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cod head
Gives the broth its fish flavor and body as the bones and flesh cook down.
Rice
Releases starch during simmering, which thickens the soup and gives it body.
Onion
Adds savory aroma and depth as it softens in the broth.
Carrot
Adds mild sweetness and aroma that balance the savory fish broth.

The step that matters

Adding the fish and serving. Fish is delicate and cooks quickly in hot broth. Keep the soup at a gentle simmer rather than a hard boil, so the flesh stays tender and flaky instead of turning tough and falling apart.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (rice, carrot, pepper, parsley):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Turnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against rice, carrot, pepper, parsley. 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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