Skip to main content
Main

Cod's Head

A baked cod head served with a shrimp and oyster sauce, garnished with parsley, lemon, and horseradish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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)

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. Clean and wash the cod's head thoroughly.

  2. Rub a baking dish with butter.

  3. Place the cod's head inside the baking dish.

  4. Add sweet herbs, onion with cloves, mace, pepper, bruised nutmeg, lemon peel, horseradish, and water.

  5. Dust the head with flour.

  6. Grate nutmeg over the head.

  7. Add bits of butter.

  8. Sprinkle the head with breadcrumbs.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Bake in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) until done.

  2. Remove the cod's head.

  3. Place it in a serving dish over boiling water to keep warm.

  4. Pour the baking liquid into a saucepan.

  5. Boil the liquid for 3-4 minutes.

  6. Strain the liquid.

  7. Add red wine, ketchup, shrimp, oysters, mushroom pickle, and butter rolled in flour.

  8. Stir well.

  9. Boil until thickened.

  10. Strain again.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the cod's head.

  2. Fry the toasted bread until crisp.

  3. Arrange the toasted bread around the cod's head.

  4. Garnish with parsley, notched lemon, and scraped 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 gives the sauce its rich fish flavour.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and the flour-butter mix thickens the sauce.
Flour
Coats the fish and, with butter, thickens the sauce as a roux-like binder.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Shrimp
Contributes savoury seafood flavour and tender texture to the sauce.
Oysters
Adds briny seafood flavour and a soft, silky texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce until thickened. Boiling after adding the butter-flour mixture lets the starch swell and thicken the sauce; too little boiling leaves it thin, while overcooking can make the shrimp and oysters tough.

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.

You might also like

Illustration of Brown BreadIllustrationBrown Bread461 recipesIllustration of Lemon SauceIllustrationLemon Sauce236 recipesIllustration of White BreadIllustrationWhite Bread80 recipesIllustration of Bread OmeletteIllustrationBread Omelette60 recipes