Skip to main content
Main

CocT$ Headi to Roast

A roasted fish head served with a sauce of butter, anchovy, liver, egg yolks, wine, lemon, and optional pickled cockles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and mace 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: egg, milk, wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the fish head

  1. Wash and clean the fish head, then scrape it with a knife.

  2. Strew coarse sea salt on the fish head.

  3. Place the fish head in a large tin oven or a stew-pan before the fire.

  4. Drain off any water that comes from it for the first half hour.

Roast

  1. Strew nutmeg, cloves, beaten mace, and salt over the fish head.

  2. Dust the fish head with flour.

  3. Baste the fish head with melted butter.

  4. Turn the fish head.

  5. Season the fish head.

  6. Baste the other side of the fish head.

  7. Turn and baste the fish head often, adding bread crumbs on top.

  8. Roast the fish head for four to five hours until done.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter with the anchovy and the bruised liver.

  2. Mix in the beaten egg yolks.

  3. Bring the mixture to a boil, then strain.

  4. Add pickled cockles, red wine, and lemon juice, and simmer for 1-2 minutes.

  5. Pour the sauce into the pan the fish head was roasted in.

  6. Stir the sauce well.

  7. Return the sauce to the saucepan and stir until it boils.

Serve

  1. Place the fish head on a large dish.

  2. Pour the sauce into a tureen to serve hot.

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. Nutmeg + macetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + clovetop 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. Fish + anchovytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together615 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Fish + buttertop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,432 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish head
Forms the main body of the dish, and its bones and skin hold moisture during long roasting.
Butter
Basting fat that carries spices and promotes browning on the surface, and enriches the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Bread crumbs
Form a crust on top of the fish that helps brown and protect the surface during roasting.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances the fat from the butter and yolks.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth and umami to the sauce as it melts into the butter.

The step that matters

Boiling the egg yolk sauce. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat and can scramble if they boil hard. Once the yolks are in, the mixture should be heated carefully and stirred constantly to keep it smooth.

Flavor stand-ins for the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, nutmeg, mace, flour, butter, anchovy, liver):

  1. Parsleyabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Cinnamonabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Thymeabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, nutmeg, mace, flour, butter, anchovy, liver. 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 Fried FishIllustrationFried Fish120 recipesIllustration of Fish CroquettesIllustrationFish Croquettes81 recipes