Name: Broiled Haddock
Ingredients: 1 haddock, cleaned and dried; veal stuffing; 1 egg; bread crumbs; sauce of your choice (anchovy, melted butter, etc.)

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 ↓

Broiled Haddock

Oven, in the book's wordsA warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare

Fill the cleaned haddock with veal stuffing and sew it up.
Curl the tail into its mouth.

Coat and bake

Brush the fish with beaten egg and sprinkle bread crumbs over it.
Bake in a warm oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 30 minutes.

Serve

Serve on a dish without a napkin, with your choice of 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.

Haddock + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together200 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,057 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Haddock + anchovytop 6% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together75 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,260 recipes

Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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, opaque flesh in the oven.
Egg: Beaten egg brushed on the fish helps the bread crumbs adhere and brown in the oven.
Bread crumbs: Form a crisp, golden crust on the outside of the fish as it bakes.
Veal stuffing: Fills the cavity, adding richness and moisture to the inside of the fish as it cooks.

“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.