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Cod's Head

A roasted cod head served with a butter anchovy sauce and garnished with shrimps or pickled cockles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Liver and horseradish work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and 42 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-methylbutyraldehyde, which smells malty, chocolate. 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 head

  1. Wash the cod's head thoroughly and score it with a knife.

  2. Sprinkle a little coarse sea salt on the head.

  3. Place the head in a large tin oven or stew-pan before the fire.

  4. Remove any water that comes from the head for the first 30 minutes.

  5. Sprinkle nutmeg, cloves, mace, and salt over the head.

  6. Dust the head with flour.

  7. Baste the head with butter, turning it often.

  8. Sprinkle bread crumbs on top of the head.

  9. Roast the head for 4 to 5 hours if it is a large head.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt butter with an anchovy and the boiled liver of the fish, mixing well.

  2. Add two yolks of eggs to the mixture.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Return the sauce to the saucepan.

  5. Add shrimps or pickled cockles, red wine, and lemon juice to the sauce.

  6. Simmer the sauce for 1-2 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the roasted head in a large dish.

  2. Serve hot.

  3. Garnish with fried fish, lemon, and scraped horseradish.

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. Liver + horseradishtop 13% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together42 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Butter + breadtop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,145 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks bind the sauce and give it a thick, smooth body.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the head brown while basting.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust on top of the head as it roasts.
Anchovy
Adds a salty, savoury depth to the sauce.
Red wine
Adds acidity and savoury depth to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the sauce after adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble and curdle if the sauce gets too hot or boils. Keeping the simmer gentle and brief keeps the sauce smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

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

  1. Parsleybetter flavor fit
  2. Cinnamonabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Thymeabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against nutmeg, mace, butter, bread, 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.

More cod head recipes

and Shoulders 25Boiled and Shoulders 18Baked 15Soup 8Roasted 7Boiled 5 See all 11 →

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