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Crimped Cod’s Head and Shoulders

A boiled cod head and shoulders served with lemon and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Crimped Cod’s Head and Shoulders

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the cod's head and shoulders thoroughly.

Cook

  1. Place in a pot of water and season with salt and pepper.

  2. Bring to a boil and simmer until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve with lemon wedges and melted butter.

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

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

  2. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Cod's head and shoulders
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the flesh that becomes tender as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky moistness when melted over the cooked fish.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich fish and butter.

The step that matters

Simmer until cooked through. Fish protein sets as it heats and turns dry and tough if overcooked, so the simmer should be gentle and stopped once the flesh is opaque and flakes easily.

“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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