Skip to main content
Main

Haddock and Potato

A baked dish of flaked smoked haddock mixed with mashed potatoes, lemon, herbs, and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Haddock and Potato

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the haddock layer

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Bake the smoked haddock for a few minutes until cooked enough to handle.

  3. Remove the skin and bone from the haddock.

  4. Flake the fish.

  5. Mix the flaked haddock with mashed potatoes, 3 ounces of butter, lemon peel, lemon thyme, nutmeg, salt, and Nepal pepper.

  6. Transfer the mixture to a greased pie dish.

  7. Smooth the top of the mixture.

  8. Score the top with a fork.

  9. Bake until golden brown.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pan, fry the onion rings and chopped garlic in 2 ounces of butter with cloves and bay leaves until pale yellow.

  2. Add the milk to the pan and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture.

  4. Mix 1 tablespoon of flour with a little cold milk.

  5. Pour the flour mixture into the strained milk as it boils.

  6. Stir until thickened.

  7. Add the filleted skate, lemon rind, and nutmeg.

  8. Cook gently until the fish is done.

  9. Once slightly cooled, stir in the beaten egg yolk, salt, and Nepal pepper.

  10. Warm gently without boiling to prevent curdling.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

What each ingredient does

Smoked haddock
Provides the main flaky fish flavour and texture in the pie filling.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the top brown in the oven.
Flour
Thickens the milk sauce so it becomes smooth and coats the fish.
Egg yolk
Enriches and thickens the sauce gently once it has cooled slightly.
Filleted skate
Adds delicate fish body to the sauce as it cooks gently.

The step that matters

Warm the sauce gently after adding the egg yolk. Egg yolk proteins set and curdle when overheated, so the sauce must be warmed without boiling and only once slightly cooled to stay smooth and thick.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, butter, lemon, thyme, nutmeg, pepper, clove):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, butter, lemon, thyme, nutmeg, pepper, clove. 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.

You might also like

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