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Baked Haddocks

Baked haddocks served with mashed potatoes, butter, egg glaze, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Haddock and ketchup share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 23 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Haddocks

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the cleaned haddocks on a flat dish surrounded by the mashed potatoes.

  2. Add a bit of butter and a little salt inside each fish.

  3. Glaze the fish with the beaten egg and place bits of butter on top.

  4. Garnish with potato balls.

  5. Bake for 30 minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour melted butter and ketchup over the fish before serving.

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. Haddock + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together23 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Haddock + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together171 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Haddock + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together764 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Haddocks
Form the main body of the dish, cooking to flaky, tender fish.
Mashed potatoes
Surround the fish and provide a soft, starchy base that absorbs juices.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the fish from drying as it bakes.
Egg
Glazes the surface, helping it set and brown in the oven.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the finished fish.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, butter, egg, ketchup):

  1. Chivefits about as well
  2. Shallotfits about as well
  3. Potatothe original
  4. Mustardfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, butter, egg, ketchup. 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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