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Cod Head and Shottldeks

Boiled cod heads are fried and served with parsley, horseradish, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cod Head and Shottldeks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the eyes from the cod heads and wash them thoroughly.

  2. Drain the heads and sprinkle with salt. Let them sit for 1-2 hours.

Poach

  1. Place the heads in boiling water and boil for 10-20 minutes, depending on size.

  2. Remove the heads from the water, drain, and remove the skin.

Brown and serve

  1. Dredge the heads lightly with flour.

  2. Place the heads before a clear fire and baste with dripping or butter until lightly browned.

  3. Garnish with parsley.

  4. Serve with horseradish and sliced 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 their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Parsley + horseradishtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Horseradish + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Flour + horseradishtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together743 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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 heads
Form the main body of the dish, cooking into flaky, moist flesh.
Flour
Light coating that helps the surface brown during basting.
Dripping or butter
Fat that carries heat to the surface, promoting browning and rich flavour.

The step that matters

Boiling the heads. Boiling for too long toughens and dries the flesh, while too short a time leaves it underdone near the bone. Size determines the right time, so check the thickest part for flakiness.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Arrowrootfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, parsley, lemon. 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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