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Croftes of Fried Bread

A fried bread dish topped with haddock mixture and oysters, garnished with lemon, cress or endive.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Croftes of Fried Bread

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the haddock

  1. Remove the skin and bone from the haddock.

  2. Pound the flesh in a mortar or pass it through a sieve.

  3. Add the melted butter to the haddock mixture.

  4. Season the mixture with salt, pepper, and cayenne.

  5. Remove gills from oysters.

Assemble

  1. Spread some haddock mixture on top of each slice of fried bread.

  2. Place an oyster on top of the mixture.

  3. Cover the oyster with more haddock mixture.

  4. Shape the assembled pieces into a pyramid and place in a baking dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the pyramid with buttered paper.

  2. Heat through for about 8 minutes.

  3. Serve on lace paper and garnish with endive or cress, and a sprinkle of pepper.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + endivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together108 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  3. Pepper + endivetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together308 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  4. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, 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 topping and gives it a delicate, flaky texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the haddock mixture so it stays soft when heated.
Oysters
Contribute a briny, savoury flavour and a tender texture inside the topping.

The step that matters

Heat through gently under buttered paper. Fish proteins toughen and dry out with overheating. Covering the pyramid with buttered paper traps moisture, so the haddock and oysters heat through while staying tender.

Swap the endive

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Endivethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, haddock, pepper, oyster, lemon. 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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