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Codling Soup

A soup made from codling meat, shrimps, parsley, bread, egg, mace, pepper, and broth, finished with parsley roots.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the forcemeat

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

  2. Add the shredded parsley and the soaked roll, then pound the mixture together.

  3. Mix in the egg and season with mace and pepper.

Cook and thicken the soup

  1. Stew the codlings or haddocks in broth until cooked.

  2. Strain the broth, remove the fish, and pulp the meat through a sieve.

  3. Boil the pulp with parsley roots and thicken the soup.

Serve

  1. Serve the soup 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. Shrimp + haddocktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together83 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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
Provide the flaky fish meat that forms the body of the soup.
Egg
Binds the forcemeat so it holds together when shaped and cooked.
Soaked roll
Adds soft bulk and moisture to the forcemeat, keeping it light.
Shelled shrimps
Add savoury flavour and texture to the forcemeat.
Broth
Serves as the cooking liquid that carries the flavour of the fish into the soup.

The step that matters

Thicken the soup after pulping the meat. Pulped fish and bread give body only when the mixture is boiled gently and stirred; if it is boiled too hard or left unstirred, it can scorch on the base or separate, leaving a thin, grainy soup.

Swap the mace

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

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

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