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Baked Haddock

A whole haddock stuffed with veal, ham, and breadcrumbs, baked until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Haddock

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Clean the haddock by gutting it carefully and trimming it.

  2. Stuff the fish with a mixture of veal, ham, and bread crumbs.

  3. Sew the fish closed with strong thread and shape it into a circle, placing its tail in its mouth.

Coat and bake

  1. Rub the fish with butter or a mixture of beaten egg and flour, then sprinkle with additional bread crumbs.

  2. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and bake the fish for about 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish on the baking tin or a larger 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 dish and cooks through to flaky, tender fish during baking.
Egg
Binds the flour into a coating that helps the crumbs adhere and brown in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Add bulk to the stuffing and form a crisp, browned crust on the outside.
Veal
Adds meaty body and richness to the stuffing.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Sew the fish closed firmly. If the stitching is loose or the thread is weak, the stuffing can spill out and the stuffing may cook unevenly while the fish dries. Strong, evenly spaced stitches hold the filling in place as the fish bakes.

“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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