Skip to main content
Main

Haddock, with Poached Eggs

A grilled haddock topped with butter, salt, pepper, poached eggs, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Haddock, with Poached Eggs

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Grill the haddock until cooked through.

  2. Place the grilled haddock on a hot dish.

  3. Top with butter, salt, and pepper.

  4. Arrange the poached eggs on the fish.

  5. Sprinkle with minced parsley 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Haddock + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together764 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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, providing flaky, tender fish as the base.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, melting over the hot fish to carry flavor.
Poached eggs
Add creamy richness when their yolks break over the fish and act as a sauce.
Parsley
Contributes fresh, green aroma and a light herbal note that brightens the richness.

The step that matters

Grill the haddock until cooked through. Fish proteins set and turn opaque as they heat, so undercooking leaves it translucent and cooking too long dries it and makes it tough. Checking that it flakes easily at the thickest point helps avoid both.

“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.

You might also like