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Cod's Head to Roast

A roasted cod head seasoned with spices, butter, and a sauce of anchovy, liver, egg yolks, shrimp, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,557 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, fish, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash and clean the cod's head, then scrape it with a knife.

  2. Strew coarse sea salt on the fish.

  3. Place the salted fish in a large oven or stewpan before the fire.

  4. Drain off any water that comes from it for the first half hour.

Season and roast

  1. Season the fish with nutmeg, cloves, beaten mace, and salt.

  2. Dust the fish with flour.

  3. Baste the fish with melted butter.

  4. Turn the fish, season again, and baste the other side.

  5. Turn and baste often, adding bread crumbs on top.

  6. Roast for 4 to 5 hours for a large head.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter.

  2. Mix the melted butter with the anchovy, boiled and bruised liver, and beaten egg yolks.

  3. When the mixture boils, strain it.

  4. Return the strained mixture to the saucepan.

  5. Add shrimp or pickled cockles, red wine, and lemon juice.

  6. Simmer for 1-2 minutes.

Serve

  1. Combine the sauce with the roasted cod's head in a large dish.

  2. 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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Nutmeg + macetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + macetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Anchovy + livertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together197 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

  5. Egg + anchovytop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,268 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cod's head
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking slowly to become tender.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and add richness as they set with gentle heat.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, basting the fish and enriching the sauce.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust on top of the fish during roasting.
Flour
Dusted on the fish to help form a browned surface as it roasts.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, buttery sauce.

The step that matters

Straining the sauce after it boils. Boiling egg yolks can curdle and turn grainy. Straining removes any set bits and keeps the sauce smooth, so heat should be kept controlled once the yolks are in.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (nutmeg, mace, flour, butter, egg, anchovy, liver):

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  3. Marjoramabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, mace, flour, butter, egg, anchovy, liver. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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