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Haddock, Curried

A haddock dish cooked in a curry-flavored gravy with onions, cream, and flour.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Haddock and cream work together. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 181 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Haddock, Curried

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and skin the fish, then lift the flesh from the bones and cut it into pieces about 3 inches long and 1 inch wide.

  2. Coat the fish pieces in flour and fry them in hot lard or dripping until browned.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the stock, curry powder, and flour mixed with the gravy to thicken.

  2. Add the minced onions and the cream or milk to the saucepan.

  3. Drain the fish and add it to the gravy mixture, simmer gently for 8 to 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Skim the sauce, place the fish in the center of a dish, pour the sauce over it, and serve.

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. Haddock + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together181 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Haddock + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together401 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Flour + oniontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  5. Flour + creamtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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 body of the dish, with flaky flesh that holds its shape while simmering.
Curry powder
Supplies the spiced, aromatic flavour that defines the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce and helps the coated fish brown when fried.
Onions
Add sweetness and body to the sauce as they soften.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and mellows the sauce, making it smoother.

The step that matters

Frying the coated fish until browned. Flour coating browns in hot fat, which seals the surface and adds flavour; if the fat is not hot enough the coating absorbs oil and turns greasy, and overcooking makes the flaky fish dry.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, flour, cream. 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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