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To Make Sauce for the Cod's Head

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Horse and radish work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 529 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. The science ↓

To Make Sauce for the Cod's Head

Ingredients

Directions

  1. TAKE a lobster, if it be alive, stick a skewer in the

  2. vent of the tail, (to keep the water out,) throw a

  3. handful of salt in the water; when it boils, put in the

  4. lobster, and boil it half an hour; if it has spawn on it,

  5. fl£ THE VIRGINIA HOUSEWIFE.

  6. pick them off, and pound them exceedingly fine in a marble mortar, and put them into half a pound of good melted butter, then take the meat out of the lob- ster, pull it in bits, and put it in your butter, with a meat spoonful of lemon pickle, and the same of walnut catsup, a slice of lemon, one or two slices of horse-radish, a little beaten mace, salt and cayenne to your taste; boil them one minute, then take out the horse-radish and lemon, and serve it up in your sauce boat.

  7. N. B. If you cannot get lobsters, you may make shrimp, cockle, or muscle sauce, the same way; if there can be no shell fish got, you then may add two anchovies cut small, a spoonful of walnut liquor, a large onion stuck with cloves — strain and put it in the sauce boat.

By Mary Randolph (1762–1828). 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. See the original page.

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.

  1. Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together529 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  2. Radish + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together196 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Walnut + clovetop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Radish + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together174 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Radish + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together46 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (horse, radish, butter, lemon, walnut):

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Capersbetter flavor fit
  3. Nutmegbetter flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against horse, radish, butter, lemon, walnut. 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).

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