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Cod's Head to Bake

A baked cod head served with a sauce of wine, ketchup, shrimp, oysters, and herbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg 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: milk, wheat, fish, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Rub a baking dish with butter and place the cleaned cod's head inside.

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

  4. Dust the fish with flour, grate nutmeg over it, and dot with butter.

  5. Bake in the oven until done.

Make the sauce

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

  2. Pour the baking liquid into a saucepan and boil for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Strain the liquid and add red wine, ketchup, shrimps, oysters, mushroom pickle, and flour-rolled butter.

  4. Stir and boil until thick, then strain and pour over the cod's head.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with crispy fried bread, parsley, lemon, and 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. Mace + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Clove + nutmegtop 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. Pepper + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Clove + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together13,144 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 and gives the cooked flesh and bones its flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the surface brown lightly in the oven.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter, giving it body.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Shrimps
Add sweet, briny seafood flavour to the sauce.
Oysters
Add briny seafood flavour and a soft texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce until thick, then strain. Flour-rolled butter thickens only when it is boiled long enough for the starch to swell. Stopping early leaves a thin sauce, while over-boiling after adding the shellfish can toughen the oysters and shrimps.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

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

  1. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, mace, pepper, white pepper, nutmeg, lemon. 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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