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To Bake Cod's Head

A 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) · 20 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

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

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

  4. Flour the cod's head, sprinkle grated nutmeg over it, dot with pieces of butter, and cover with breadcrumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in the oven until done, then carefully transfer to a serving dish.

  2. Set the serving dish over boiling water to keep warm.

Make the sauce

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

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

  3. Stir until thickened, then pour over the cod's head.

  4. 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 and gives the cooking liquid its savoury flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the fish and helps the breadcrumb topping brown.
Flour
Dusts the fish and, with the rolled butter, thickens the sauce.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp topping that browns in the oven and protects the fish from drying.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Shrimp
Adds seafood flavour and tender texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce until thickened. Flour-thickened sauces need steady stirring while they heat so the starch swells evenly and does not form lumps. Once thickened, the sauce should be poured over the fish promptly so it stays smooth and warm.

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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