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Haddock, Stewed

A stewed haddock with potatoes, parsley, and a flour‑butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,855 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Haddock, Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Split the haddock, remove the skin, and remove bones.

  2. Cut the fish into pieces.

  3. Pare the potatoes and slice them.

Cook

  1. Boil the potatoes with chopped parsley roots until almost done.

  2. Layer the fish and potatoes in a shallow saucepan and cover the saucepan.

  3. Simmer until cooked through.

  4. Add finely chopped green parsley.

  5. Thicken the sauce with flour and butter, then boil for one minute.

  6. Serve.

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. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 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. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  5. Haddock + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together171 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
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks.
Potatoes
Add starch and body, filling out the dish and soaking up the cooking liquid.
Flour
Thickens the cooking liquid into a sauce as it heats with the butter.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the thickened sauce a smooth, rounded flavour.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with flour and butter. Flour must be cooked with fat and liquid long enough to swell its starch and thicken smoothly. Boiling it briefly helps cook out the raw flour taste and prevents lumps.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, potato, 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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