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Finnan Haddie

A smoked haddock served in a creamy sauce with butter, flour, and paprika or cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Finnan Haddie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Steam the smoked haddock until the skin and bones can be easily removed.

  2. Break the flesh into small pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the cream in a saucepan until very hot.

  2. In a bowl, rub together the butter and flour until smooth.

  3. Slowly stir the butter-flour mixture into the hot cream until thickened.

Finish and serve

  1. Add the fish to the sauce and heat through.

  2. Finish with a dash of paprika or a hint of cayenne.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Cream + flourtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).

Butter and flour 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

Cream
Forms the body of the sauce and gives it a rich, smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the cream into a sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and helps the flour blend smoothly into the sauce.
Smoked haddock
Provides the main flavour and flaked texture of the dish.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter-flour mixture into the hot cream. Adding the roux slowly while stirring keeps flour from clumping, so the sauce thickens evenly and smoothly instead of becoming lumpy.

“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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