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To Bake Cod, or Haddock

A baked cod or haddock stuffed with butter, egg yolks, bread crumbs, spices, and topped with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

To Bake Cod, or Haddock

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Skin the fish and prepare the stuffing by mixing the roe, butter, egg yolks, bread crumbs, pepper, salt, lemon peel, and nutmeg.

Stuff and bake

  1. Bind the stuffing with the beaten egg white and fill the fish with it, then sew it up.

  2. Place the fish in a tin dish, top with bits of butter, and bake for 1 hour, turning and basting frequently.

  3. Garnish with fried roe or oysters 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.

  1. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Lemon + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Enrich the stuffing and add richness and a tender, custard-like body.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body so it holds together inside the fish.
Egg white
Binds the stuffing so it holds its shape when the fish is filled and sewn.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, keeping the fish from drying out and aiding browning.

The step that matters

Turning and basting the fish during the hour of baking. Fish is lean and dries out quickly in dry oven heat. Basting with melted butter coats the surface, adds moisture, and promotes even browning while the fish cooks through gently.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, butter, egg, bread, pepper, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegthe original
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, butter, egg, bread, pepper, lemon. 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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