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To Boil Prepared Haddock

A boiled haddock served with a sauce made from its heads, trimmings, onion, parsley, salt, pepper, butter, flour, catsup, vinegar, soy sauce, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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 ↓

To Boil Prepared Haddock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the haddocks by scraping them and removing the entrails.

  2. Cut them open below the vent to remove blood.

  3. Cut off the tails, eyes, and gills.

  4. Wash the fish.

  5. Add salt inside the bodies.

  6. Let them sit overnight.

Boil the fish

  1. In boiling water, add 2 large handfuls of salt and the haddocks.

  2. Boil until they rise to the surface, about 10 to 15 minutes, skimming off any scum.

  3. Skin the fish.

  4. Cut the fish into pieces and place in a dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, boil the heads and trimmings of the haddocks with onion, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  2. Strain the mixture.

  3. Heat it with butter kneaded into flour.

  4. Add catsup, vinegar, soy sauce, and white wine.

  5. Pour the sauce over the fish.

  6. Bake.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Haddocks
Form the main body of the dish, becoming flaky and tender when cooked through.
Butter kneaded into flour
Thickens the sauce and adds richness and body to it.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the sauce.
Anchovies
Add savory depth to the sauce, though they dissolve into it.

The step that matters

Boil until they rise to the surface. Boiling too long toughens fish proteins and makes the flesh dry and flaky in the wrong way. Checking for the fish to rise, and skimming scum, keeps the flesh tender and the broth clear.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, parsley, pepper, butter, flour, vinegar, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, parsley, pepper, butter, flour, vinegar, sauce. 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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