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Haddock Soup

A soup made with haddock, butter, flour, stock, milk, onion, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Haddock Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wipe the fish, remove the fins and eyes, and cut it into pieces.

  2. Boil the fish in stock or water, then add the milk and the onion (peeled and stuck with a clove).

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter or dripping, stir in the flour, and cook for a few minutes without browning.

  2. Gradually add the fish stock and fish to the mixture, and let it simmer for 30 minutes.

  3. Pass the soup through a sieve, return it to the pot, and season to taste with salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried bread croutons.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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
Provides the main flavour and body of the soup as it cooks in the stock.
Butter or dripping
Carries flavour and, with the flour, forms a roux that thickens the soup.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked briefly in fat and then blended into the liquid.
Milk
Adds richness and creaminess, softening the flavour of the broth.

The step that matters

Cooking the flour in the fat. Cooking the flour briefly without browning removes its raw taste and lets it thicken smoothly. Browning would change the colour and flavour of the soup.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, butter, flour, milk, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, butter, flour, milk, pepper, nutmeg. 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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