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Crappit Heads, or Fish with Forcemeat

Fish heads stuffed with a forcemeat of oatmeal, suet, spices, and seafood, then boiled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Crappit Heads, or Fish with Forcemeat

Ingredients

Directions

Make the forcemeat

  1. Combine oatmeal, suet or butter, white pepper, salt, and minced onion in a bowl to create a coarse forcemeat.

  2. Add minced lobster or crab meat, boned anchovy, chopped egg yolk, grated bread, cayenne pepper, and butter pieces.

  3. Mix in beaten eggs and oyster liquor to bind the mixture.

Stuff and cook

  1. Stuff the heads of haddocks or whitings with the forcemeat.

  2. Boil the stuffed fish until cooked through, then serve hot.

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. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Anchovy + eggtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,330 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Oatmeal
Forms the bulk of the coarse forcemeat, giving it body and soaking up moisture.
Suet or butter
Adds fat that keeps the forcemeat rich and tender as it cooks.
Eggs
Bind the forcemeat together so it holds its shape inside the fish.
Lobster or crab meat
Contributes savoury, shellfish flavour and some texture to the stuffing.
Grated bread or pounded biscuit
Absorbs liquid and adds structure, helping the forcemeat hold together.
Oyster liquor
Adds briny, savoury moisture that seasons the binding mixture.

The step that matters

Boil the stuffed fish until cooked through. Boiling too hard or too long can break the fish apart and toughen the egg-bound forcemeat, while undercooking leaves the eggs in the stuffing raw. Gentle, steady heat sets the eggs evenly.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, onion, lobster, anchovy, egg, bread, pepper):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, onion, lobster, anchovy, egg, bread, pepper. 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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