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Grilled Fresh Haddock

Grilled haddock served with a mustard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Haddock and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Grilled Fresh Haddock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Split the haddock down the back and clean it, removing the bone.

  2. Cut off the head, tail, and fins.

  3. Season the inside with pepper and salt, then hang it in the larder overnight.

  4. In the morning, brush the fish with melted butter.

Grill

  1. Butter a fish grid or lay the fish on straws and grill over a slow fire for 10 to 15 minutes.

Make the mustard sauce

  1. For the mustard sauce, melt 2 oz of butter in a saucepan.

  2. Stir in the flour, then add the water and vinegar.

  3. Season with salt and sugar to taste, then strain the mixture.

  4. Re-warm the sauce and add the cream or milk.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish with the sauce either in a sauce-boat or poured around it, garnished with parsley.

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 + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Haddock + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together181 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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, moist texture when grilled gently.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the fish and forms the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the melted butter into a smooth, cohesive sauce base.
English mustard
Adds sharp heat and pungency that cuts through the richness of the butter sauce.
Cream or milk
Adds richness and a mellow, smooth finish to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Grilling over a slow fire. Gentle, slow heat cooks the thick fish through while keeping it moist; too fierce a fire can scorch the outside before the centre is cooked.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, butter, pepper, sauce, flour, vinegar, cream):

  1. Mustardthe original
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, butter, pepper, sauce, flour, vinegar, cream. 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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