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Haddock with One Egg

A baked haddock coated in egg yolk and breadcrumbs, served with drawn butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Haddock with One Egg

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Prepare the haddock and cut it into square pieces or steaks.

  2. Place the haddock in a 400°F (200°C) oven until the skin begins to rise.

Coat and cook

  1. Remove the haddock and dip it into the beaten egg yolk.

  2. Coat the haddock with bread crumbs.

  3. Place the coated haddock on a buttered grill over clear coals.

  4. Cook until done and serve with drawn butter sauce.

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. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked until flaky and done.
Egg yolk
Acts as a binder so the bread crumbs adhere to the fish.
Bread crumbs
Form a coating that browns and adds a crisp exterior texture.
Butter
Greases the grill to prevent sticking and adds richness to the fish.

The step that matters

Coating the haddock with bread crumbs. The egg yolk must evenly wet the fish so the crumbs stick. Gaps leave bare fish that can dry out or fall off on the grill.

“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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