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To Bake Cod’s Head

A baked cod head served with a seafood sauce of shrimp, oysters or mussels, ketchup, and mushroom pickle.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 24 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 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Butter a baking pan and clean the cod's head thoroughly.

  3. Place the head in the pan and add sweet herbs, onion, cloves, mace, black and white pepper, bruised nutmeg, water, lemon peel, and horseradish.

  4. Dust the head with flour, grate nutmeg over it, and dot with butter. Sprinkle breadcrumbs on top.

  5. Bake in the oven until cooked through.

Make the sauce

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

  2. Pour the cooking liquid into a saucepan and boil for 3-4 minutes, then strain.

  3. Add red wine, ketchup, shrimp, oysters or mussels, mushroom pickle, and flour-rolled butter to the strained liquid.

  4. Stir until thick and boiling.

  5. Pour over the cod's head.

Garnish and serve

  1. Garnish with toast triangles, lemon slices, horseradish, and crisped parsley.

  2. Serve hot.

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 whole in the baking pan.
Shrimp
Adds savoury seafood flavour and tender texture to the finished sauce.
Oysters or mussels
Adds briny seafood flavour and body to the sauce.
Flour-rolled butter
Thickens the sauce as it melts and boils, giving it a smooth, glossy body.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness, acidity and savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the sauce until thick and boiling. Flour-rolled butter thickens only once it is hot enough to boil. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and floury-tasting, while over-boiling can break the butter and make it greasy.

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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