Skip to main content
Main

Haddock with Oysters

A baked haddock served with a sauce of oyster liquor, wine, mustard, cream, and oysters.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper 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 ↓

Haddock with Oysters

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare and bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Butter a baking tin and lay the haddock in it.

  3. Pour the oyster liquor and lemon juice over the fish, then sprinkle with coralline pepper.

  4. Cover with buttered paper and place the tin in another filled with boiling water.

  5. Bake for 20 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Serve the fish on a hot dish with the sauce made by mixing creme de riz with white wine, oyster liquor, and mustard.

  2. Bring the sauce to a boil, then stir in cream and oysters.

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

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

  2. Haddock + creamtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together181 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 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

Haddock
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking gently to flaky, tender pieces.
Oysters
Add a briny, savoury flavour and a soft, delicate texture to the sauce.
Creme de riz
Its starch thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and flavour, and keeps the fish from sticking to the tin.

The step that matters

Adding the oysters to the boiling sauce. Oysters toughen and shrink quickly when overheated. Adding them at the end, just until they warm through, keeps them tender and plump.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, oyster, lemon, pepper, butter, white wine, cream):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, oyster, lemon, pepper, butter, white wine, cream. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipesBoiled HaddockBoiled Haddock10 recipesCorn FrittersCorn Fritters6 recipes