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To Bake

Baked haddock stuffed with oysters, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, served with veal gravy and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

To Bake

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and wipe the haddocks with a cloth; do not wash them.

  2. Strew coarse sea salt over the fish.

  3. Let the fish sit for several hours.

  4. Wipe off the salt.

  5. Cut off the heads and fins.

  6. Carefully remove the skin.

Coat and stuff

  1. Beat the yolks of the eggs.

  2. Dip the fish in the beaten yolks.

  3. Roll the fish in bread crumbs mixed with pepper, salt, and chopped parsley.

  4. Stuff the heads and breasts with chopped oysters and bread crumbs blended with an egg.

Bake and serve

  1. Butter a baking dish.

  2. Place the fish in the dish.

  3. Add pieces of butter on top of the fish.

  4. Bake the fish.

  5. Mix the veal gravy and cream to make the sauce.

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. Oyster + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Bread + oystertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,545 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  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

Haddock
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into flaky, moist flesh.
Eggs
Beaten yolks bind the bread crumb coating so it adheres to the fish.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp coating and bind the stuffing, helping the surface brown in the oven.
Oysters
Add briny, savory flavor to the stuffing inside the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the fish moist and promotes browning.
Veal gravy and cream
Combine into a rich sauce that adds moisture and savory depth.

The step that matters

Bake the fish. Haddock is lean and cooks quickly, so it can dry out past the point of flakiness. Baking only until the flesh flakes easily keeps it moist.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits less well
  4. Sagefits less well

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