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Dried-Haddock Fritters

Fritters made from soaked dried haddock mixed with flour batter and fried in lard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper 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 ↓

Dried-Haddock Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Soak the dried haddock overnight.

  2. Scrape and wash the fish in plenty of water the next morning.

Make the batter

  1. In a bowl, mix flour with enough water to make a thin batter.

  2. Add finely chopped onion, parsley, and red peppers to the batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard or clarified fat in a frying pan until boiling.

  2. Drop about 1 cup of batter into the hot fat and place a piece of fish in it.

  3. Fry until brown, then cover the fish with more batter and turn it over.

  4. Fry until nicely browned on both sides, then drain the fritters.

  5. Repeat with the remaining fish and batter.

  6. Serve piled on a hot dish.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

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

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Haddock + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together401 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

Dried haddock
Forms the main fish filling, which must be soaked to soften and rehydrate before frying.
Flour
Forms the thin batter that coats the fish and fries into a crisp, browned crust.

The step that matters

Frying the fritters in hot fat. The fat must be hot enough before the batter goes in. Hot fat sets the coating quickly and browns it, so the fritter absorbs less grease and does not turn soggy or fall apart.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, flour, 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.

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