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Fillets of Haddock with Tomato Sauce

A haddock fillet simmered in tomato sauce with butter, stock, lemon, parsley, pepper, and salt, served with milk‑cooked potato balls.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fillets of Haddock with Tomato Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Combine tomatoes and butter in a sauté pan, cover, and simmer until soft.

  2. Pass the mixture through a sieve and mix with stock, lemon juice, parsley, pepper, and salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Lay the haddock fillets in the sauce and cook until done.

  2. Garnish the dish with potato balls cooked in milk.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  5. Tomato + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,798 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Tomatoes
Provide the base of the sauce, with body and a bright, acidic flavor once softened and sieved.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the tomatoes soften and giving the sauce a smooth, rounded texture.
Stock
Thins the puréed tomatoes into a sauce and adds savory depth.
Haddock fillets
Provide the main protein, cooking gently in the sauce until just done.

The step that matters

Lay the haddock fillets in the sauce and cook until done. Fish protein sets quickly and becomes dry and flaky-tough if overcooked. Keeping the sauce at a gentle simmer and checking for the fish to turn opaque and separate easily helps keep it moist.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, lemon, parsley, pepper, haddock, potato, milk):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Spinachfits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, lemon, parsley, pepper, haddock, potato, milk. 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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