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Baked Haddock

A baked haddock dish with butter, milk, and seasonings, served with pan gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. 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. Cut the haddock into pieces as if for frying.

  2. Rinse each piece under water and dry with a cloth.

  3. Place the fish in a baking pan and dust lightly with pepper, salt, and flour.

  4. Dot generously with small pieces of butter.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour in the milk and bake at 350°F (175°C) for one hour, or until the bones come out easily.

  2. Baste with milk and melted butter at first, then allow a crust to form over the fish.

  3. Serve with the liquid in the pan for gravy.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to flaky tenderness in the oven.
Flour
Dusted lightly on the fish, it helps form a light crust and browning on the surface.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and melts to baste the fish and help it brown.
Milk
Poured into the pan, it moistens the fish and its solids help form a golden crust and pan gravy.

The step that matters

Allowing the crust to form. Basting with milk and butter first keeps the surface moist, then leaving the fish uncovered lets the milk solids and flour brown into a crust. Basting too late or too often can keep the top pale and soggy.

“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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