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Fresh Cod, Haddock, and Sheepshead

A fish stew made with cod, haddock, or sheepshead simmered with herbs, onions, and spices, served with boiled potatoes and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Fresh Cod, Haddock, and Sheepshead

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the fish thoroughly.

  2. In a fish kettle, combine parsley, thyme, bay leaf, allspice, sliced onions, pepper, and salt.

  3. Add the fish and cover with water.

Cook and serve

  1. Simmer until the fish is cooked through.

  2. Drain the fish and serve warm with boiled potatoes and melted butter.

  3. For a different serving, broil the fish wrapped in buttered paper on a grill, turning occasionally until done.

  4. Alternatively, sauté the fish by rolling it in flour and frying in a pan with a piece of butter until cooked, adding chopped parsley and a few drops of lemon juice before serving.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + allspicetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,077 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Parsley + allspicetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,289 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish (cod, haddock, or sheepshead)
Forms the body of the stew and provides the main flesh that cooks through gently in the liquid.
Onions
Soften during simmering and add sweetness and savoury depth to the poaching liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the served fish and potatoes.

The step that matters

Simmer until the fish is cooked through. Fish proteins set at a fairly low temperature, so overcooking makes the flesh dry and flaky in a tough way. Gentle simmering and checking for opaque, easily flaked flesh keeps it moist.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, parsley, thyme, allspice, pepper, potato, butter):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, parsley, thyme, allspice, pepper, potato, butter. 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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