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Baked Salt Haddock

A smoked haddock baked with bread crumbs, butter, herbs, and a raw egg yolk, then basted and garnished with fried parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Salt Haddock

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Stuff the smoked haddock with the mixture of bread crumbs, butter, pepper, salt, mixed herbs, and beaten egg yolk.

  3. Tie the fish neatly with tape to prevent cutting.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the fish, basting it with butter until cooked through.

  2. Carefully untie the tape.

  3. Place the fish on a serving dish and garnish with 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.

  1. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 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

Smoked haddock
Forms the main body of the dish and is the protein that cooks through in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and butter in the stuffing, keeping the filling soft and holding it together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and basting with it helps the fish stay moist as it bakes.
Raw egg yolk
Binds the stuffing together and adds richness as it sets during baking.

The step that matters

Tie the fish neatly before baking. Tying keeps the stuffing enclosed and the fish in shape, so the filling does not spill out as the fish cooks and the flesh contracts.

“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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