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Haddocks

A haddock dish stewed, floured, fried, and served with a ketchup‑anchovy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Haddock and ketchup share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 23 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Haddocks

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the skin, heads, tails, fins, and belly-flaps from the haddocks.

  2. Stew the fish slowly in a pan with water, peppercorns, and onion for 15 minutes.

  3. Strain the liquid and sprinkle the fish with flour.

Fry and make the sauce

  1. Fry the fish in dripping or lard until golden.

  2. In a separate pan, combine the strained liquid, cayenne pepper, ketchup, and essence of anchovy; simmer until thickened.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish with the sauce poured around it in a deep dish.

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 + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. White pepper + macetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Ketchup + flourtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Haddock
Forms the flaky main body of the dish, cooked gently first and then fried until golden.
Flour
Dusted on the fish so it browns in the frying fat and forms a light coating.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and tang to the sauce, giving it body and a savoury-sweet depth.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the fat.
Onion
Contributes aromatic sweetness to the stewing liquid that later becomes the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the sauce until thickened. Simmering the strained liquid reduces it and concentrates flavour, while the flour-dusted fish is what thickens the liquid as it cooks. Overheating or boiling too hard can make the sauce uneven, so keep the heat gentle and watch the consistency.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, butter, ketchup, mace, lemon, flour, onion):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, butter, ketchup, mace, lemon, flour, onion. 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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