Name: Baked Haddock
Ingredients: 1 haddock; ½ cup stock; 2 tablespoons butter; brown bread crumbs

Why it works: Butter and bread 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 ↓

Baked Haddock

Ingredients

1 haddock
½ cup stock
2 tablespoons butter
brown bread crumbs

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

Sew up the haddock to keep it in place.
Lay the fish in a well-greased baking dish.

Bake

Pour the stock around the fish.
Dot the top with small pieces of butter.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 20 to 30 minutes.

Serve

Sprinkle brown bread crumbs over the fish when serving.
Pour gravy around the fish before serving.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Haddock + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together764 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Haddock + breadtop 24% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together220 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Haddock: Forms the main protein, which cooks through gently in the moist baking dish.
Stock: Adds moisture around the fish so it steams gently and does not dry out.
Butter: Adds fat that enriches the fish and helps it brown lightly as it bakes.
Brown bread crumbs: Add a crisp, toasted texture and a nutty flavour on top of the fish.

“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.