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Baked Haddock

A haddock stuffed with forcemeat, dredged in flour, baked with butter, capers, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Baked Haddock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the haddock and fill it with forcemeat, then sew it securely.

  2. Dredge the fish with flour.

  3. Pour warmed butter over the fish.

  4. Sprinkle with pepper and coarse sea salt.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake the fish in a Dutch oven before the fire.

  2. Baste the fish with warmed butter and capers from time to time.

  3. Dredge the fish with flour two or three times while baking.

  4. Bake until it is a rich dark brown.

  5. Serve with the sauce created from the basting.

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. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Pepper + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Butter + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,637 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Haddock + caperstop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 into flaky, moist flesh.
Flour
Coats the fish so it browns and forms a crust during baking.
Butter
Carries moisture and fat over the fish, aiding browning and forming the basting sauce.
Forcemeat
Fills the fish, adding savoury richness that flavours the flesh as it cooks.
Capers
Add a sharp, acidic note to the butter sauce made from basting.

The step that matters

Bake until it is a rich dark brown. Browning depends on surface dryness and repeated flouring and basting. Pulling the fish too early leaves it pale, while overbaking can dry the flesh, so the colour is the cue to watch.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, flour, butter, pepper, veal):

  1. Parsleyfits about as well
  2. Capersthe original
  3. Turmericfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, flour, butter, pepper, veal. 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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