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Cod’s Roe, Fried

Fried cod roe with onion, vinegar, and breadcrumbs, served with fried parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cod’s Roe, Fried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the roe

  1. Wash the cod's roe in salt and water.

  2. Place the roe in a stewpan with the sliced onion, vinegar, salt, and enough boiling water to cover.

  3. Simmer gently for about 1.5 hours.

  4. Once cold, cut the roe into thick slices.

Coat and fry

  1. Coat each slice with egg and breadcrumbs.

  2. Fry in hot fat until nicely browned.

  3. Drain well.

Serve

  1. Garnish with fried parsley.

  2. Serve.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Roe + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together243 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cod's roe
Forms the main body of the dish, set firm by gentle simmering and then sliced.
Egg
Binds the breadcrumbs to the roe slices so the coating holds during frying.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer crust when fried.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp, acidic note that brightens the mild flavour of the roe.

The step that matters

Frying until nicely browned. The coating needs hot fat to brown quickly and crisp before the roe overheats. Fat that is too cool soaks into the breadcrumbs and produces a greasy, pale crust.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (roe, vinegar, parsley, thyme, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Cucumberfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against roe, vinegar, parsley, thyme, egg. 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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