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Stewed Haddock

A stewed haddock dish flavored with cayenne, mace, Worcestershire sauce, anchovy sauce, and sherry, finished with butter and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Haddock and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Stewed Haddock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish and stock

  1. Split the fish lengthwise and cut it into square pieces.

  2. Boil the fins and head, then strain the liquid.

Stew the fish

  1. Butter a porcelain saucepan and lay the fish in with the flesh side down.

  2. Sprinkle each piece with cayenne pepper, mace, salt, and flour.

  3. Add 1 pint of the strained liquid to the saucepan, cover, and simmer gently for 20 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally.

  4. Stir in Worcestershire sauce, anchovy sauce, and sherry or Madeira wine.

  5. Rub 2 ounces of butter with 2 tablespoons of flour and stir it into the gravy.

  6. Adjust seasoning with more mace and cayenne if needed, and let it simmer for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve in a deep dish garnished with parsley and lemon, pouring the gravy over the fish.

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. Haddock + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Haddock + anchovytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together75 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Fish + anchovytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together637 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Pepper and mace 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

Haddock
Forms the main body of the dish and flakes into tender pieces as it simmers.
Butter
Adds richness and helps carry flavour through the gravy.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the gravy as it cooks, giving it body.
Fish stock
Provides the liquid base that cooks the fish and forms the gravy.
Sherry or madeira wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the gravy.
Worcestershire sauce
Contributes savoury, tangy depth to the gravy.

The step that matters

Simmering the fish gently with the lid on. Fish proteins set and toughen quickly at high heat, so a gentle simmer keeps the pieces tender and intact. Shaking the pan instead of stirring protects the flakes from breaking apart.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, fish, pepper, flour, sauce, anchovy, sherry):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, fish, pepper, flour, sauce, anchovy, sherry. 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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