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Baked Stuffed Haddock

A 4‑pound haddock is salted, stuffed with fat salt pork, tied, and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Haddock and pork work together. They rank in the top 24% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 163 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Stuffed Haddock

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and wipe the haddock, removing the eyes but leaving the head and tail.

  2. Rub the fish inside and out with coarse sea salt.

  3. Stuff the fish and sew it closed.

  4. Cut five diagonal gashes on each side of the backbone.

  5. Insert strips of fat salt pork into the gashes, alternating the gashes.

  6. Shape the fish into an 'S' form using a skewer and secure it with small twine.

Bake and baste

  1. Arrange additional strips of fat salt pork on a baking sheet.

  2. Place the fish on the sheet in a dripping pan.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for one hour.

  4. Baste the fish with the fat in the pan every eight minutes.

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 + porktop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together163 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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, cooking to flaky tenderness when baked whole.
Fat salt pork
Melts as it bakes, adding moisture and rich fat flavour to the lean fish.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the fish and draws out some surface moisture before cooking.

The step that matters

Basting the fish every eight minutes. Fat spooned over the fish keeps the lean flesh moist and carries flavour into the surface, so letting the pan dry out risks dry, tough fish.

“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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