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To Dake Haddock

A baked haddock topped with butter, breadcrumbs, and a finely chopped mushroom, onion, and parsley mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Dake 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 the fish

  1. Cut off the heads of the haddock and trim and bone them.

  2. Season the fish with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Chop a small quantity of mushroom, onion, and parsley very fine.

  4. Spread the chopped mixture over the fish.

Bake and serve

  1. Lay small pieces of butter on top of the fish.

  2. Place the fish in a dish with bread crumbs.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 50 minutes to 1 hour.

  4. Skim the gravy and serve in the same 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  5. Mushroom + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Haddock
The main protein, which turns flaky and opaque as it cooks through.
Mushroom
Adds moisture and savoury, earthy flavour to the chopped topping as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the fish and helps the topping brown lightly in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices from the fish and help form a light, golden crust on the topping.

The step that matters

Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 50 minutes to 1 hour. Fish is delicate and overcooks quickly, becoming dry and tough. Checking for flakiness at the early end of the time range helps keep it moist.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, pepper, mushroom, parsley, butter, bread. 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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