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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. Trim, scrape, and gut the fish carefully.

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

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

Coat and bake

  1. Rub the fish with butter or a batter made from egg and flour.

  2. Sprinkle the fish with bread crumbs.

  3. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  4. Bake the fish for about 1 hour.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish on the baking tin or a platter.

  2. Consider mussel sauce as an accompaniment.

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. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Fish
Forms the main body that is stuffed, shaped, and baked through.
Veal
Adds savoury meat flavour and body to the stuffing.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and help bind the stuffing, and crisp the outer coating.
Egg
Binds the flour batter so it clings to the fish.
Flour
Thickens the batter coating, helping it set and brown in the oven.

The step that matters

Sew the fish closed and shape it. The stuffing expands and moistens as the fish heats. If the thread is weak or the seam loose, the stuffing can leak out, and the fish may cook unevenly. A firm, compact shape keeps the filling inside and the fish even.

“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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