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Smoked Haddock

Baked smoked haddock topped with white sauce, Parmesan, breadcrumbs, and oiled butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Haddock and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Smoked Haddock

Oven, in the book's wordsA very hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the smoked haddock and season with cayenne pepper.

  2. Pour 2 tablespoons of milk over the fish and cover with white sauce.

  3. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and bread crumbs, then moisten with oiled butter.

Bake

  1. Place the fish in a well-buttered paper bag, seal it, and cook for 20 minutes in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

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 + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  4. Parmesan cheese + buttertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,163 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Smoked haddock
Is the main protein, cooked gently in the bag so it stays moist and flaky.
White sauce
Covers the fish and adds creamy moisture as it heats.
Parmesan cheese
Melts and browns on the surface, adding savoury flavour and colour.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp topping that soaks up butter and browns in the oven.
Oiled butter
Adds fat that moistens the crumbs and helps them brown.

The step that matters

Seal the paper bag tightly. A tight seal traps steam around the fish so it cooks gently and stays moist. If the bag leaks, the fish can dry out before the topping is done.

“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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