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Crappet Heads, or Fish Soup

A fish soup made with haddock heads, roes, and a forcemeat stuffing, thickened with buttered flour and flavored with mushroom and walnut ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 18,623 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Crappet Heads, or Fish Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Boil 2 haddocks and the tails, fins, and roes of 6 haddocks in salted water for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the fish and roes.

  3. Boil the liquid for an additional hour.

  4. Strain the liquid.

  5. When the liquid is cold, pick the fish from the bones and remove strings and skin from the roes.

  6. Peel and chop 2 onions. Boil the onions in cold water. Pour off the water.

Prepare the forcemeat and heads

  1. In a bowl, mix ½ pound of shortbread crumbs, 2 teaspoons of salt, 1½ teaspoons of white pepper, and 1 teaspoon of grated nutmeg.

  2. Bind the mixture with 2 beaten egg whites to form a forcemeat.

  3. Stuff the skinned haddock heads with the forcemeat and tie them with coarse thread.

Finish the soup

  1. Boil the strained liquid.

  2. Thicken the liquid with flour kneaded in butter.

  3. Add parsley, pepper, 2 tablespoons of mushroom ketchup, 2 tablespoons of walnut ketchup, and ½ pint of white wine.

  4. Cut 2 haddocks into 3 or 4 pieces each.

  5. Add the cut haddocks and the stuffed heads to the stock. Boil until cooked through, about 15 minutes.

  6. If any forcemeat is left, form it into small 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. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Haddock + roetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. White pepper + nutmegtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,375 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Roe + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together243 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Haddock heads
Hold the forcemeat stuffing and add body and flavour to the broth as they cook.
Egg whites
Bind the forcemeat so it holds together while it cooks in the stock.
Shortbread crumbs
Form the bulk of the forcemeat and add sweetness and a buttery richness.
Flour kneaded in butter
Thickens the strained stock into a smooth, lightly body-rich soup.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the finished soup.
Mushroom ketchup
Adds savoury, umami depth to the stock.

The step that matters

Boiling the stuffed heads and fish in the stock. Boiling too hard can break up the fish and cause the egg-bound forcemeat to loosen or burst out of the heads. A gentle simmer keeps the pieces intact while they cook through.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, roe, onion, nutmeg, egg, flour, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, roe, onion, nutmeg, egg, flour, butter. 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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