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Fresh Cod's Roe Sandwiches

A sandwich made with fresh boiled cod roe, liver, chives, parsley, and chili vinegar, served on buttered brown bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and chive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 450 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Fresh Cod's Roe Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Melt the butter in a stew-pan and add the chopped shallots or onion. Fry until light brown.

  2. Add the cod's roe and liver slices to the pan, along with the chives, parsley, pepper, salt, and chili vinegar. Stir for a few minutes.

  3. Pound the mixture in a mortar until fine, then pass it through a wire sieve and let it cool.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the paste between thin slices of buttered brown bread. Optionally, add French anchovy mustard for extra flavor.

  2. Press the sandwiches, trim the edges, and cut them into squares or oblongs. Serve on a folded napkin.

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. Shallot + chivetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Chive + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Chive + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,885 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cod's roe
Provides the main flavour and a soft, spreadable body when pounded into the paste.
Liver
Adds richness and a smooth, savoury body to the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour when the shallot is fried and the bread is spread.
Shallot or onion
Adds sweetness and savoury depth when fried light brown in butter.

The step that matters

Pound until fine, then sieve and cool. Pounding and sieving breaks the roe and liver into a smooth, even paste that spreads well without lumps. Cooling firms the paste so it does not soak into the thin bread.

Swap the chive

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, shallot, roe, liver, parsley, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Chivethe original
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Horseradishfits less well
  4. Capsicumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, shallot, roe, liver, parsley, pepper, vinegar. 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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