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Finnan Haddie with Tomatoes

A boiled fish dish of Finnan haddie cooked in tomato sauce with onions and peppers, served over macaroni.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Finnan Haddie with Tomatoes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Freshen the finnan haddie.

  2. Boil it gently for 30 minutes.

  3. Flake the fish into large bits with two forks. Remove all bones.

Make the tomato sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan. Fry the onion and pepper until softened. Add the flour. Gradually stir in the tomato juice. Let the mixture boil.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the fish to the mixture. Heat until very hot.

  2. Serve immediately with plain boiled and seasoned macaroni.

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 + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Flour and butter 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

Finnan haddie
Provides the main flaky fish body of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and carries the flavor of the cooked onion and pepper.
Flour
Thickens the tomato juice into a smooth sauce.
Tomato juice
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and adds acidity and tomato flavor.
Onion
Adds savory sweetness and aroma as it softens in the butter.

The step that matters

Add the flour and stir in the tomato juice gradually. Adding the liquid slowly while stirring keeps lumps from forming, because flour starch must be dispersed before it thickens the sauce evenly.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, pepper, tomato):

  1. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  2. Okrabetter flavor fit
  3. Eggplantbetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, pepper, tomato. 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.

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