Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Cod’s Roe

Boiled cod roe simmered in vinegar and pepper, served with sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Boiled Cod’s Roe

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the roe well in cold water, then tie it up in a piece of muslin.

Boil and drain

  1. In a saucepan, combine 1 pint of water, vinegar, salt, and peppercorns.

  2. Bring the mixture to a boil, then add the roe.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes, then lift the roe out and let it drain.

Serve

  1. Place it on a hot dish and pour sauce over it, adding lemon juice and cayenne.

  2. Alternatively, garnish the roe with parsley and scalloped lemon, serving the sauce separately.

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. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

  3. Roe + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together251 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,334 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Roe + parsleytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together259 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

What each ingredient does

Cod's roe
Forms the dish itself, setting firm and holding its shape when boiled.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the poaching liquid, brightening the mild flavour of the roe.

The step that matters

Boil for 15 minutes, then lift the roe out and let it drain.. Boiling too long or too hard can toughen and crack the delicate roe membrane, leaving it dry and grainy. Timing the boil and draining it well keeps it moist and intact.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes