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Baked Haddock

A whole haddock baked with salt pork, butter, flour, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked 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 the fish

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

  2. Clean the fish and sprinkle it with coarse sea salt.

  3. Stuff the fish and sew it closed.

  4. Cut 4-5 slits on each side of the backbone and insert narrow strips of fat salt pork.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the fish in a greased pan, sprinkle with black pepper, brush with melted butter, and dredge with flour.

  2. Add small bits of pork around the fish.

  3. Bake for 1 hour, basting as soon as the fat renders, then every 10 minutes.

  4. If the fish bakes too quickly, lower the flame.

  5. Serve with drawn butter or Hollandaise 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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Pork + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,933 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pork + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,121 recipes

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

  5. Haddock + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together401 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, 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

Haddock
The main protein, which flakes and cooks through gently in the oven.
Fat salt pork
Renders fat during baking, moistening the fish and adding savory flavor.
Melted butter
Adds richness and helps the surface brown while the fish bakes.
Flour
Dusted on the surface, it helps the coating brown and thicken the pan juices.

The step that matters

Basting during the bake. Basting once the fat renders spreads the hot fat over the fish, keeping the flesh moist and the surface golden. Fish dries out quickly, so skipping the basting or letting the oven run too hot can leave it tough.

“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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