Name: Finnan Haddie
Ingredients: Finnan haddie (smoked haddock); ½ cup butter

Why it works: Haddock and butter work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 764 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Finnan Haddie

Ingredients

Finnan haddie (smoked haddock)
½ cup butter

Directions

Prepare

Cut a piece of Finnan haddie to the desired size.

Cook and serve

Place it in a frying pan and cover with boiling water.
Boil for 5 minutes.
Drain the water, add butter, and stir until melted and the fish is well-coated.
Serve immediately.

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.

Haddock + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together764 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Finnan haddie: Is the main protein, cooked gently in boiling water until tender and flaky.
Butter: Adds richness and a glossy coating that carries flavour over the fish.

“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.