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Codling Soup

A soup made from codling meat, shrimps, parsley, milk‑soaked roll crumb, egg, mace, pepper, parsley roots, and salt.

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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the forcemeat

  1. Remove the meat from the codlings.

  2. Pound the meat with the shrimps in a mortar.

  3. Add the chopped parsley and the soaked roll crumb, then pound the mixture together.

  4. Mix in the egg and season with mace and pepper.

Make the soup

  1. Stew the codlings in broth until cooked.

  2. Strain the broth and remove the meat.

  3. Pulp the meat through a sieve and boil the pulp with parsley roots.

  4. Thicken the soup.

  5. Serve the soup 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

Meat from codlings
Forms the main body of the soup and the forcemeat, giving savoury flavour and substance.
Shrimps
Add a sweet, briny seafood aroma to the forcemeat.
Egg
Binds the forcemeat so it holds together when shaped and cooked.
Roll crumb soaked in milk
Adds moisture and softness to the forcemeat, keeping it tender rather than dense.
Parsley roots
Contribute a fresh, herbal aroma to the boiled pulp and broth.

The step that matters

Stew the codlings until cooked. Overcooked fish turns dry and tough as its proteins tighten and squeeze out moisture, while underdone flesh will not pulp smoothly through the sieve.

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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