Skip to main content
Main

Finnan Haddie

A smoked haddock dish broiled with butter and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,227 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Finnan Haddie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the Finnan haddie thoroughly.

  2. Soak in cold water for 30 minutes.

  3. Soak in very hot water for 5 minutes.

  4. Wipe the fish dry.

Cook

  1. Rub the fish with butter and lemon juice.

  2. Broil the fish for 15 minutes.

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. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Haddock + lemontop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Finnan haddie (smoked haddock)
Main protein; its smoky flavour and flaky texture define the dish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and helping the surface brown under heat.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the smoky, salty flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Wipe the fish dry. Surface moisture steams the fish instead of letting it brown under the broiler, and wet skin makes the butter and lemon rub slide off. Drying well before broiling helps the surface take on colour.

“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.

More finnan haddie recipes

Cremed 4Creamed 3 See all 16 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesBoiled HaddockBoiled Haddock10 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes