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Fillets of Haddock, Sauté

Sautéed haddock fillets served with a butter gravy and parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fillets of Haddock, Sauté

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and bone the haddock, then cut it into fillets.

  2. Season the fillets with salt and pepper.

  3. Roll the fillets in flour.

Cook and serve

  1. Sauté the fillets in butter until cooked through.

  2. Remove the fillets and make gravy in the pan.

  3. Strain the gravy and serve it alongside the fish, garnished with parsley.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 fillets
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks.
Flour
Coats the fish so it browns in the butter and thickens the pan gravy.
Butter
Conducts heat for sautéing and adds richness and browning flavour.

The step that matters

Sautéing the floured fillets. Flour browns quickly, so the butter should be hot but not smoking. Too little heat leaves the coating pale and soggy; too much burns it before the fish cooks through.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits less well

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