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Finnon Haddock Savoury

A savory dish of haddock mixed with butter, anchovies, cream, and spices, served on toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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 ↓

Finnon Haddock Savoury

Ingredients

Directions

Make the mixture

  1. Remove the flesh from half a haddock and pound it in a mortar with the butter and anchovies.

  2. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve into a copper pan.

  3. Add the cream, egg yolk, cayenne, salt, and lemon juice; heat gently without boiling.

Serve

  1. Serve on fingers of toast, croutons, or fried bread.

  2. Garnish with finely chopped parsley, coraline pepper, or lobster coral.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Haddock
Provides the main savoury body and flaky texture of the spread.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture.
Anchovies
Contribute a deep, salty savouriness that rounds out the fish.
Egg yolk
Thickens the warmed mixture and gives it a silky, custard-like body.
Cream
Adds moisture and softens the mixture for a smoother texture.

The step that matters

Heat gently without boiling. Egg yolk thickens when warmed, but if the mixture boils it can curdle and turn grainy instead of smooth and silky.

“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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