Name: Fish Savoury
Ingredients: 1 large haddock head; livers of small haddocks; coarse sea salt; black pepper; butter

Why it works: Haddock and butter work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 764 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Fish Savoury

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

Prepare the livers of the small haddocks.
Dust them with coarse sea salt and plenty of black pepper.

Stuff and bake

Place the livers inside the mouth of the large haddock with a piece of butter.
Bake and serve hot.

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.

Haddock + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together764 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Liver + buttertop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,065 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Liver + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together2,375 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Haddock + peppertop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together696 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

Haddock livers: Provide rich, soft filling that becomes tender and flavorful during baking.
Butter: Adds moisture and richness, helping the filling stay soft and savory as it bakes.

“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.