Why it works: Haddock and butter work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 764 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Baked Haddock
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
Wash the haddock and truss it into the shape of the letter S.
Brush the fish with beaten egg and shake browned breadcrumbs over it.
Bake and serve
Place the haddock on a baking tin with 1 tablespoon of dripping.
Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 20 to 30 minutes, depending on size, basting the fish during baking.
Remove the string and serve with melted butter or anchovy sauce if desired.
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.
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Haddock + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together764 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
-
Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together118,967 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
-
Haddock + eggtop 28% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together492 recipes
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 and cooks through to flaky, tender flesh in the oven.
- Egg
- Binds the breadcrumbs to the fish surface so the coating stays in place while baking.
- Browned breadcrumbs
- Form a crisp, golden crust on the outside of the fish during baking.
- Dripping
- Adds fat that helps brown the crumb coating and keeps the fish from drying out.
The step that matters
Basting the fish during baking. Spooning the fat over the fish keeps its surface moist while the heat works, so the flesh stays tender and the crumb coating browns evenly rather than drying or scorching.
“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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