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Baked Fish Head

A baked fish head seasoned with herbs, spices, butter, and served with a sauce of wine, ketchup, shrimp, and shellfish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Fish Head

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Preheat oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Butter a baking pan and place the cleaned fish head in it.

  3. Add the sweet herbs, clove‑studded onion, mace, black and white pepper, bruised nutmeg, water, lemon peel, and horseradish.

  4. Flour the fish head and sprinkle grated nutmeg over it.

  5. Dot the fish head with pieces of butter and sprinkle flour over it.

  6. Bake until cooked through.

Make the sauce

  1. Remove the fish head and place it in a serving dish over boiling water to keep warm.

  2. In a saucepan, pour the cooking liquid from the baking dish and boil for 3–4 minutes.

  3. Strain the liquid and add red wine, ketchup, shrimp, oysters or mussels, and mushroom pickle.

  4. Stir in the butter rolled in flour until thick and boiling.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish head and arrange the toast around it.

  2. Garnish with lemon slices, horseradish, and crisped parsley.

  3. 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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fish head
Forms the main body of the dish and gives the cooking liquid its flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the flour in the sauce thicken it smoothly.
Flour
Coats the fish and thickens the sauce, giving it body.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Shrimp
Adds seafood flavour and sweetness to the sauce.
Oysters or mussels
Add briny seafood flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter rolled in flour until thick and boiling. Flour thickens only when it is fully heated, so the sauce must reach a full boil and be stirred constantly. Otherwise it stays thin or turns lumpy.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, onion, clove, mace, pepper, nutmeg, lemon):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, onion, clove, mace, pepper, nutmeg, lemon. 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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