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Baked Haddock

A haddock fillet stuffed with a crumb and butter mixture, baked in simmering water and served with butter, parsley, or sharp egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Haddock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Soak the crumbs of a roll in milk and squeeze dry in a cloth.

  2. In a saucepan, combine the dry crumbs with a walnut-sized piece of butter.

  3. Season the mixture with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Stuff and cook the fish

  1. Prepare the haddock by cleaning and removing the head.

  2. Stuff the haddock with the crumb mixture and roll it up tightly.

  3. Bind the rolled fish with tape to hold its shape.

  4. In a pot, bring water seasoned with pepper, salt, and vinegar to a boil.

  5. Gently simmer the stuffed haddock in the boiling water for 10 minutes or until cooked.

Serve

  1. Serve the baked haddock with butter, parsley, or sharp egg 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Walnut + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

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

  4. Walnut + peppertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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 a flaky, tender texture.
Roll (crumbs)
Absorbs milk and butter to form a moist, soft stuffing inside the fish.
Milk
Moistens the bread crumbs so they stay soft and hold the stuffing together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing, keeping it moist and flavourful.

The step that matters

Simmering the stuffed fish. Simmering gently keeps the fish moist and tender; a hard boil can toughen the flesh and break the rolled parcel apart, letting stuffing escape.

Swap the walnut

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, milk, butter, pepper, vinegar, parsley, egg):

  1. Walnutthe original
  2. Beansfits about as well
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Lentilsfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, milk, butter, pepper, vinegar, parsley, egg. 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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