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Codling and Haddock Soup

A soup made from codling or haddock, shrimps, parsley, and a milk‑soaked roll, served with forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Codling and Haddock Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the forcemeat balls

  1. Pound the codling meat in a mortar with the shrimps.

  2. Add the chopped parsley and soaked roll, and pound until combined.

  3. Form the mixture into balls using the egg, and season with mace and pepper.

Make the soup

  1. Stew the codlings or haddocks in broth until cooked, then strain.

  2. Remove the meat, pulp it through a sieve, and boil with parsley roots.

  3. Thicken the soup and serve with the forcemeat balls.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Meat + shrimptop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Parsley + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Milk + macetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: sabinene (woody, terpenic).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Codlings or haddocks
Provides the flaky fish body that gives the soup and forcemeat their main substance.
Egg
Binds the pounded fish and shrimp mixture so it holds together as balls.
Soaked roll crumb
Adds softness and moisture to the forcemeat, keeping it light rather than dense.
Shelled shrimps
Adds sweet, savoury shellfish flavour to the forcemeat.

The step that matters

Forming the forcemeat balls. The pounded mixture must be bound well with the egg and kept moist with the soaked roll, or the balls will crumble or turn dense when cooked in the soup.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (meat, shrimp, parsley, milk, egg, pepper):

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against meat, shrimp, parsley, milk, egg, pepper. 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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