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To Broil Haddocks or Whitings

Broiled haddocks or whitings served with pickles and melted butter or cockle sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 Broil Haddocks or Whitings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Gut and wash the haddocks or whitings, then dry them with a cloth.

  2. Rub a little vinegar over the fish to help keep the skin on.

  3. Dust the fish well with flour.

Cook

  1. Rub a gridiron with butter and heat it until very hot.

  2. Lay the fish on the gridiron and turn them two or three times until cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve with pickles and melted butter or cockle sauce.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Haddock + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together764 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Haddock + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together401 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Haddocks or whitings
The main fish, whose flesh cooks to flaky and mild when heated through.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the surface brown and protects the skin from sticking.
Butter
Greases the gridiron and adds richness and browning to the fish.
Vinegar
A light acid rubbed on the fish that helps the skin stay intact during cooking.

The step that matters

Heating the gridiron until very hot. A very hot, buttered gridiron sears the coating quickly so the fish releases cleanly and does not stick or tear. A cool surface lets the skin bond to the metal and break apart when turned.

“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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