Why it works: Haddock and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 29% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 90 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Boiled Fish
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash and clean the fish.
Put trimmings into the water.
Place the fish in a piece of muslin or on a strainer in the fish kettle.
Cook
Add the fish to the water and allow to cook for 10 minutes per pound plus an additional 10 minutes.
Do not allow the water to boil.
Serve
Serve on a hot dish with parsley or egg sauce.
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.
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Haddock + vinegartop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together90 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
- Cod, hake, or small haddock
- Forms the main body of the dish; gentle poaching sets its flesh into moist, tender flakes.
- Vinegar
- Adds acidity to the poaching water, which helps firm the fish's surface proteins.
The step that matters
Do not allow the water to boil. Simmering gently keeps the fish moist and tender. A rolling boil toughens the proteins, makes the flesh dry and ragged, and can break the fish apart.
“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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