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Dublin Bay Haddock

A whole Dublin Bay haddock seasoned with coarse sea salt, boiled with water, served with boiled parsnips, parsley, and egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Haddock and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Dublin Bay Haddock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make four or five incisions on each side of the fish, about 1 inch deep.

  2. Place the fish in a deep dish and cover it well with coarse sea salt.

  3. Let it sit for about 2 hours.

Cook and serve

  1. Bring a pot of water to a boil and add the fish.

  2. Simmer for 30 to 40 minutes.

  3. Serve the fish on a napkin, garnished with plain boiled parsnips and parsley, with egg sauce on the side.

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. Haddock + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Parsnip + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together484 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Haddock + parsleytop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together456 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

Haddock
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in simmering water until flaky.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the flesh during the resting period before cooking.

The step that matters

Simmering the fish. Water that boils hard rather than simmering can break up and toughen the delicate flesh. Keeping the water just below a boil cooks the fish evenly and keeps it moist.

Swap the parsnip

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, parsley, egg, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Parsnipthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, parsley, egg, sauce. 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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