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Finnan Haddie

Baked Finnan haddie with cream sauce, egg yolk, cheese, paprika, parsley, and breadcrumb topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Cheese and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,130 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Finnan Haddie

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. Break Finnan haddie into large pieces.

  2. If very salty, soak in cold water for 2 hours.

  3. Braise the pieces.

  4. After braising, break into small pieces.

Make the sauce

  1. Make a cream sauce.

  2. Add egg yolk, grated cheese, hard boiled egg, paprika, and parsley to the sauce.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the top with bread crumbs and cheese.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

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. Cheese + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,130 recipes

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

  2. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Cheese + parsleytop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,507 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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

What each ingredient does

Finnan haddie
Provides the main smoky, salty fish flavour and the flaky body of the dish.
Egg yolk
Enriches the sauce and helps it set into a creamy, binding custard-like texture.
Grated cheese
Adds savoury flavour and melts into the sauce, helping it brown on top.
Hard boiled egg
Adds body and a soft, firm texture through the sauce.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden crust on the top when baked.

The step that matters

Soaking the finnan haddie if very salty. Finnan haddie is cured in salt, so soaking it in cold water draws out excess salt. Without this, the sauce and final dish can taste too salty.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cheese, bread):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cheese, bread. 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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