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Haddock

A haddock fillet salted, floured, broiled, then fried in butter and served with fried parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Haddock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the cleaned haddock inside and out with coarse sea salt.

  2. Run a skewer through the head and hang the fish in the open air for 24 hours.

  3. After 24 hours, skin the fish and dust it with flour.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the fish over a clear fire until cooked through.

  2. For serving, you can use maitre d'hotel, mushroom, tomato, or any sauce you prefer.

  3. Alternatively, cut the fish open, brush with egg, and cover with a mixture of breadcrumbs, parsley, chives, thyme, salt, and pepper.

  4. Fry in butter until golden brown and serve with fried parsley as a garnish.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + chivetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Chive + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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, cooking to a flaky texture when heated through.
Flour
Dusting creates a dry surface that helps the fish brown and crisp when fried.
Butter
Fat for frying that carries heat and adds browning and rich flavor to the surface.
Egg (in the method)
Brushed on the fish to help the breadcrumb coating adhere.

The step that matters

Fry in butter until golden brown. Butter contains milk solids that brown quickly and can scorch over high heat. Moderate heat lets the surface turn golden while the fish cooks through without burning.

Swap the chive

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivethe original
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Potatofits about as well

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