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To Stew a Haddock

A haddock stew made with salt, mace, cayenne pepper, butter, flour, and white wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and white wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 5,083 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Stew a Haddock

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Sprinkle the fish with salt, mace, and cayenne pepper.

  2. Stew in a covered saucepan for 15 minutes.

  3. Add the butter rolled in flour and white wine, then let it boil for a few more minutes.

  4. Serve with the skin side up and the gravy in the same dish.

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. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + white winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,433 recipes

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

  4. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  5. Mace + white winetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,329 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

Haddock
Forms the main body of the stew, cooking gently into flakes in the covered pan.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour and giving the gravy a smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the butter and liquid into a gravy as it heats and boils.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, lightly flavouring the gravy as it reduces.

The step that matters

Boiling the butter, flour and wine. Flour thickens only when it reaches a boil and is stirred into the liquid, so the gravy stays thin or lumpy if it is not heated enough. Boiling a few minutes also cooks off the raw flour taste.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, pepper, butter, flour, white wine. 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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