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Cod's Roe Sandwiches

A sandwich made with cod roe, liver, butter, onion, parsley, anchovy essence, lemon juice or vinegar, salt, pepper, served on brown bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Cod's Roe Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Fry the onion in 5 oz of butter until lightly browned.

  2. Add the chopped roe and liver, parsley, and seasoning to taste.

  3. Stir over the heat for a few minutes.

  4. Pound and sieve the mixture.

Assemble and serve

  1. Spread the mixture cold on buttered brown bread and press well.

  2. Trim, then cut into circles, squares, or triangles.

  3. Serve garnished with watercress or parsley.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Roe + anchovytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 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 roe
Forms the main body of the filling, giving it a rich, savoury texture when pounded.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries the onion flavour through the filling.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and depth when fried until lightly browned.
Brown bread
Provides the base that the chilled filling is spread and pressed onto.

The step that matters

Pound and sieve the mixture. Pounding and sieving breaks down the roe and liver into a smooth, even paste. Skipping this leaves lumps that make the filling hard to spread and press evenly on the bread.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (roe, liver, butter, bread, anchovy, parsley, lemon):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against roe, liver, butter, bread, anchovy, parsley, 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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