Name: Croutes of Dried Haddock
Ingredients: ½ lb cooked dried haddock; 1 oz butter; 1 tablespoon tomato sauce; 1 hard-boiled egg; 8 or 10 slices of bread; Fried parsley; Pepper; Salt; Cayenne

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 ↓

Croutes of Dried Haddock

Ingredients

Directions

Chop the fish finely and mix with the tomato sauce, pepper, salt, and cayenne.
Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the fish mixture, heating it thoroughly.
Fry the bread slices until golden and pile the fish mixture high on top.
Garnish with chopped white and yolk of the hard-boiled egg and fried 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.

Haddock + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together200 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together17,923 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Tomato + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together5,398 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Dried haddock: Provides the main savoury flavour and the bulk of the topping.
Butter: Adds richness and carries the fish mixture as it heats through.
Tomato sauce: Adds moisture and a mild acidic sweetness to the fish mixture.
Bread: Forms the crisp base that holds the fish topping.

Swap the tomato

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

Shallotfits better
Capsicumfits better
Chivefits about as well
Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, butter, sauce, egg, bread, parsley, pepper. 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.