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Codling and Haddock Soup

A soup made from codling or haddock, shrimp, parsley, and forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Codling and Haddock Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the forcemeat

  1. Pound the codling meat with the shrimps and parsley in a mortar, then add the soaked roll crumb and pound until combined.

  2. Mix in the egg, mace, and pepper, then form the mixture into balls.

Make the soup

  1. Stew the codlings or haddocks in broth until cooked, then strain the broth.

  2. Remove the fish meat and pulp it through a sieve.

  3. Boil the pulp with parsley roots, then thicken the soup.

Serve

  1. Serve with the forcemeat balls.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Meat + shrimptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Codlings or haddocks
Provide the main fish flesh, which is cooked, pulped and gives the soup its body.
Shelled shrimps
Add a sweet, briny flavour to the forcemeat balls.
Egg
Binds the forcemeat so the balls hold their shape when cooked.
Roll crumb
Soaked in milk, it lightens the forcemeat and helps it hold moisture.

The step that matters

Pulp the fish meat through a sieve. Pushing the cooked fish through a sieve breaks it into fine particles that thicken the broth smoothly. Leftover bones or skin left in the pulp make the soup gritty.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, shrimp, parsley, milk, egg, pepper):

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, shrimp, parsley, milk, egg, pepper. 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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