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Cods' Roes in Tomato Sauce

Cod roe served in a tomato sauce with cayenne, nutmeg, and salt, topped on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Roe and sauce work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 142 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Cods' Roes in Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roe

  1. Wash the cods' roes well and cover with cold water seasoned with salt.

  2. Boil for 30 minutes or longer if the roes are large.

  3. Remove from water and let cool, then cut into slices about ½ inch thick.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the tomato sauce until boiling, then season with cayenne, nutmeg, and salt.

  2. Stir in the egg yolk and add the slices of roe, covering until heated through.

Serve

  1. Cut the toast into pieces matching the number of roe slices, place them on a dish, and top each with some roe.

  2. Pour the hot sauce over the roe and serve immediately.

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. Roe + saucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Roe + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together243 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Tomato + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,469 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Tomato + nutmegtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together879 recipes

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

  5. Egg + nutmegtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together24,744 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Egg and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 24,744 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

Cods' roes
Provides the main body and mild, rich flavor of the dish.
Tomato sauce
Forms the liquid base and adds acidity and body to the sauce.
Egg yolk
Enriches the sauce and thickens it slightly as it heats.
Cayenne
Adds sharp heat that cuts through the richness of the roe.

The step that matters

Stir in the egg yolk. Egg yolk thickens when gently heated but can scramble if the sauce is too hot. Add it off the boil, stirring constantly, so the sauce stays smooth and creamy.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (roe, sauce, egg, nutmeg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against roe, sauce, egg, nutmeg. 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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