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Cod's Head Soup

A soup made from a cod head, consommé, sherry, corn flour, herbs, served with lemon and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Basil and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 688 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

Cod's Head Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the cod's head well and blanch it for 5-6 minutes.

  2. Remove the skin and flesh from the bone and place it on a dish.

Make the soup

  1. Boil the bouquet of basil and marjoram in the consommé for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the sherry and the brown parts of the fish cut into 1-inch pieces.

  3. Mix the corn flour with a little water and add the mixture to the soup.

  4. Boil for 5 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve with lemon and cayenne pepper on the side.

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. Basil + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

  3. Basil + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,823 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Cod's head
Provides the main flavour and body of the soup from its flesh, skin and bones.
Consommé
Forms the liquid base of the soup and carries the herb and fish flavours.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a rounded, aromatic note to the broth.
Corn flour
Thickens the soup as it boils, giving it a smoother body.

The step that matters

Adding the corn flour mixture. Corn flour must be mixed smoothly with cold water before it goes into the hot soup, otherwise it forms lumps. It thickens as it heats, so the soup should keep boiling briefly afterward to cook out the raw starch taste.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sherry, corn, flour, basil, marjoram, pepper):

  1. Limefits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Cherryfits less well
  4. Orangefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against sherry, corn, flour, basil, marjoram, 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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