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Haddock with Tomato Sauce

A haddock fillet cooked in a tomato sauce with butter, flour, salt, pepper, and onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and tomato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,923 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Haddock with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the flour, salt, pepper, and onion, stirring to combine.

  3. Pour in the cooked and strained tomato and mix well.

Add the fish

  1. Add the flaked haddock to the sauce and cook until heated through.

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. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  2. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the melted butter.
Tomato
Forms the sauce base, adding acidity and body.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the haddock. Fish proteins set and toughen with prolonged heat, so the haddock only needs to warm through in the sauce. Stir gently so the flakes stay intact and moist.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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