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Cod's Head

Baked cod head with herbs, butter, breadcrumbs, and a sauce of wine, ketchup, shrimp, oysters, pickle, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,557 recipes mention both. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat, fish, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: shrimp, oyster

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 the fish

  1. Grease a baking dish with butter.

  2. Place the cleaned cod's head in the dish.

  3. Add sweet herbs, onion, mace, pepper, bruised nutmeg, lemon peel, horseradish, and water.

  4. Dust the fish with flour and grate nutmeg over it.

  5. Dot with butter and sprinkle breadcrumbs on top.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until cooked through.

  2. Once done, transfer the fish to a serving dish and keep warm over boiling water.

  3. Pour the cooking liquid into a saucepan and boil for 3-4 minutes.

  4. Strain the liquid and add ½ cup of red wine, 2 tablespoons of ketchup, a pinch of shrimp, ½ pint of oysters, 1 tablespoon of mushroom pickle, and ¼ cup of butter rolled in flour.

  5. Stir and boil until thickened, then strain and pour over the fish.

  6. Arrange fried bread around the fish and garnish with parsley, lemon, and horseradish.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Mace + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,368 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Clove + macetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,199 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Mace + white peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Nutmeg + lemontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned 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 provides the flesh that is baked and served.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the breadcrumb topping brown in the oven.
Flour
Dusted on the fish and rolled into butter to thicken the sauce.
Oysters (in the method)
Add a briny, savoury flavour to the sauce.
Red wine (in the method)
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, browned crust on the top of the fish.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour-butter. Butter rolled in flour (beurre manié) thickens the sauce only when it is stirred and kept at a boil long enough for the starch to swell. Adding it without stirring can leave lumps or a thin sauce.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, clove, mace, white pepper, nutmeg, lemon, horseradish):

  1. Carrotbetter flavor fit
  2. Potatobetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, clove, mace, white pepper, nutmeg, lemon, horseradish. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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