Name: Haddock a LA Sir Walter Scott
Ingredients: 1 large haddock; 2 tablespoons finely chopped onions; 1 tablespoon ketchup; 1 tablespoon Harvey sauce; 1 tablespoon sherry; 1 cup liquefied butter; sugar to taste; essence of anchovy to taste

Why it works: Ketchup and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Haddock a LA Sir Walter Scott

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

Clean the haddock and cut it into four equal pieces.

Make the sauce

In a saucepan, combine onions, ketchup, Harvey sauce, sherry, and liquefied butter.
Boil the mixture for 15 minutes, stirring continuously.
Add the haddock pieces and cook for about 20 minutes.

Serve

Remove the fish and arrange it on a dish.
Reduce the sauce slightly, adding sugar and essence of anchovy, then pour it over the fish.

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.

Ketchup + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,099 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Haddock + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together23 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Haddock + saucetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together200 recipes

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

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,057 recipes

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

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together479 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 body of the dish, cooked gently in the sauce until flaky.
Liquefied butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and giving the sauce a smooth, glossy body.
Ketchup: Contributes sweetness, acidity and deep savoury flavour to the sauce.
Sherry: Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Boiling the sauce before adding the fish. Boiling for the full 15 minutes while stirring concentrates the sauce and keeps the butter from separating or scorching on the base of the pan. Stirring spreads heat evenly, so the sauce thickens without catching before the fish goes in.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, ketchup, sauce, sherry, butter, sugar, anchovy):

Capsicumfits better
Mustardfits better
Shallotfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, ketchup, sauce, sherry, butter, sugar, anchovy. 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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Haddock a LA Sir Walter Scott