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Haddock, Baked

A baked haddock stuffed with herb‑bread crumb forcemeat, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, then baked and served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Haddock, Baked

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the haddock thoroughly, dry it, and wrap it in a cloth.

  2. Mix the bread crumbs, minced herbs, salt, pepper, nutmeg, cayenne, and butter together.

  3. Beat the yolks of the eggs and mix them with the forcemeat.

  4. Fill the body of the haddock with the forcemeat and sew up the opening.

  5. Curl the fish round and fasten the tail in the mouth with a skewer.

  6. Dip the fish in the egg, then roll it in the bread crumbs.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the fish in a baking dish and clarify the remaining butter to pour over it.

  2. Bake for 1 hour, or longer if the fish is very large.

  3. Serve with melted butter.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Bread + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,997 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Nutmeg + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 to flaky, tender fish under the coating.
Bread crumbs
Form the crisp coating and absorb the egg and butter to brown in the oven.
Egg yolks
Bind the forcemeat and the coating so the crumbs stick to the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the crumbs brown as the fish bakes.

The step that matters

Fasten the tail in the mouth and curl the fish before coating. The fish must be secured in its curled shape so the stuffing stays inside and the coating covers it evenly. If it opens or loosens, the forcemeat can spill out during baking.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Thymefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, bread, pepper, butter, 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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