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To Bake Cod's Head

Baked cod head served with a sauce of wine, ketchup, shrimp, oysters, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Bake Cod's Head

Ingredients

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 cod

  1. Butter a baking pan.

  2. Clean the cod's head and place it in the pan.

  3. Add sweet herbs, onion with cloves, mace, black and white pepper, bruised nutmeg, water, lemon peel, and horseradish.

  4. Grate nutmeg over the head and dot with butter.

  5. Sprinkle breadcrumbs over the top and bake in the oven at 350°F (175°C).

Make the sauce

  1. Once done, carefully transfer to a serving dish and keep warm over boiling water.

  2. Pour the baking liquid into a saucepan and boil for 3-4 minutes.

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

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

Serve

  1. Serve with toast cut into triangles.

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. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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 gently in the baking liquid until tender.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the fish and enriches the sauce when rolled in flour to thicken it.
Flour-rolled butter
Thickens the strained liquid into a smooth, glossy sauce as it melts and boils.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Shrimp
Contributes savoury, briny flavour to the sauce.
Oysters or mussels
Contribute briny, savoury flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce until thick and boiling. Flour-rolled butter thickens only once it melts and the liquid reaches a boil. Adding it without stirring can leave lumps, and stopping before a full boil leaves the sauce thin.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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