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Cod's Head

A roasted cod head served with a sauce of anchovy, liver, egg yolks, wine, lemon, and seafood.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and mace 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: 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 it.

  3. Place it in a large tin oven or a pan before the fire, ensuring proper heat.

Roast

  1. Discard the water that comes from it for the first half hour.

  2. Sprinkle nutmeg, cloves, mace, and salt over it.

  3. Dust with flour and baste with butter.

  4. After some time, turn it over, season, and baste the other side.

  5. Turn it often and baste frequently, adding bread crumbs.

  6. Roast for four to five hours if large.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Prepare melted butter with an anchovy, the bruised liver, and two beaten egg yolks.

  2. Strain this mixture through a sieve and return it to the saucepan.

  3. Add shrimps or pickled cockles, red wine, and lemon juice, simmer for a minute or two.

  4. Pour the sauce into the pan where the head was roasted and stir well.

  5. Return to the saucepan and stir until it boils.

  6. Place the head on a large dish, pour the sauce into a bowl, and serve hot.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Bread + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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, cooked slowly until the flesh is tender.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the surface brown while basting.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce and give it a smooth, rich body when gently heated.
Bread crumbs
Add texture and help form a golden crust on the roasted surface.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth to the sauce, blending into the butter and yolks.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Strain and gently heat the egg yolk sauce. Egg yolks thicken when heated but can scramble if they get too hot. Straining removes lumps, and stirring over gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

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

  1. Cinnamonbetter flavor fit
  2. Parsleyabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Marjoramabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

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

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