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Codling and Haddock Soup

A soup made from cod or haddock meat, shrimps, soaked roll, egg, and parsley, thickened with forcemeat balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Remove the meat from the codlings and pound it in a mortar with the shrimps.

  2. Add the soaked roll and shredded parsley, and pound the mixture into a paste.

  3. Form the mixture into balls using the egg.

Make the soup

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

  2. Pulp the fish meat through a sieve and boil it with parsley roots.

  3. Thicken the soup and serve it 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. Pepper + parsleytop 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. Mace + parsleytop 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
Provide the main fish flavour and body of the soup.
Shrimps
Add savoury seafood flavour and tenderness to the forcemeat.
Roll soaked in milk
Adds moisture and binds the forcemeat into a paste.
Egg
Binds the forcemeat so the balls hold their shape when cooked.

The step that matters

Form the forcemeat balls. The paste must be firm enough to hold its shape in the broth. Too much moisture from the soaked roll can make the balls fall apart, while the egg helps set them as they cook.

Swap the mace

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

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

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