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Cod Soup

A hearty soup made from cod head and shoulders, onions, garlic, butter, spices, and thickened with pea flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Cod Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the cod's head and shoulders gently in 2 quarts of water for 1.5 hours.

Make the soup

  1. In a pan, fry the onion rings and chopped garlic in butter with the whole cloves until brown.

  2. Add the fish liquor, bay leaves, sweet herbs, salt, and pepper to the pan.

  3. Thicken the soup with pea flour mixed with a little water, stirring well.

  4. Add chili vinegar, tarragon vinegar, and mushroom ketchup, then strain the soup.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried bread cut into dice.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + tarragontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,399 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + tarragontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together548 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  5. Vinegar + tarragontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,547 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cod's head and shoulders
Simmering releases fish flavor and gelatin into the water, giving the soup its body and taste.
Onion and garlic
Frying until brown builds sweet, savory aromas that deepen the soup's flavor.
Butter
Fat carries the aromatic flavors of the onion, garlic and cloves into the soup.
Pea flour
Its starch swells in hot liquid and thickens the soup.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich fish flavor.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savory, umami depth to the broth.

The step that matters

Thickening with pea flour. Pea flour clumps if added dry or unmixed. Mixing it with a little cold water first lets the starch disperse evenly. Stirring it in well and keeping the soup hot lets the starch swell and thicken the broth smoothly.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, garlic, butter, pepper, flour, vinegar, tarragon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, garlic, butter, pepper, flour, vinegar, tarragon. 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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