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Baking

To Bake Haddocks

A baked haddock stuffed with bread crumbs, onions, parsley, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

To Bake Haddocks

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 the fish

  1. Gut and clean the haddocks, then lay them in coarse sea salt overnight.

  2. Remove the skin, heads, tails, and fins from the haddocks.

Stuff and bake

  1. Make a stuffing with bread crumbs, chopped onions, chopped parsley, and a little butter.

  2. Stuff the fish with the mixture and sew the bellies closed.

  3. Rub the fish with butter and sprinkle bread crumbs on top.

  4. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven or cook over an open fire.

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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  3. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

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

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 through gently to a flaky texture.
Bread crumbs
Soak up juices in the stuffing and form a crisp topping as they brown.
Chopped onions
Add moisture and mild sweetness as they soften during cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the outside brown while keeping the fish moist.
Chopped parsley
Adds a fresh, green aroma that lightens the rich stuffing.

The step that matters

Baking the stuffed fish. Haddock is lean and delicate, so it dries out and turns tough if overcooked. Baking at a steady heat and checking that the flesh is just opaque and flakes easily keeps it moist.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Thymefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, bread, onion, butter. 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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