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Baked Stuffed Haddock

A baked haddock stuffed with a crumb mixture and salt pork, served with egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 ↓

Baked Stuffed Haddock

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Grease a roaster well and wipe off the fish.

  3. Lay the fish on its side in the pan, stuff it, and sew it up.

Season and bake

  1. Rub the fish all over with melted butter and dredge with flour.

  2. Cut five gashes in the top side of the fish and insert a strip of salt pork in each.

  3. Lay more slices of salt pork and onion around the fish in the pan.

  4. Bake for 1 hour and serve with egg sauce.

Make the stuffing

  1. For the stuffing, mix melted butter with bread crumbs, cracker crumbs, onion, salt, and pepper, then add hot water to form a paste.

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. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Haddock
The main protein, which cooks to a flaky, moist texture when baked whole.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and water to form a paste that holds the stuffing together.
Cracker crumbs
Soak up liquid in the stuffing, helping it bind into a paste.
Melted butter
Adds fat for moisture and golden browning on the fish and in the stuffing.
Salt pork
Renders fat that bastes the fish and adds savoury flavour.
Chopped onion
Adds aroma and savoury flavour to the stuffing and pan.

The step that matters

Judge doneness by flaking, not only by time. Haddock is done once its flesh turns opaque and flakes easily with a fork; overcooking tightens the proteins and squeezes out moisture, leaving it dry. Stuffing inside a whole fish heats more slowly than the surrounding flesh, so check the thickest part.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, pepper, bread, butter, pork, egg, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, pepper, bread, butter, pork, egg, sauce. 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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