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Haddock Soup

A soup made with haddock, butter, flour, stock, milk, onion, and seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Haddock Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wipe the fish, remove the fins and eyes, and cut the fish into pieces.

  2. Boil the fish in stock or water, add the milk, and add the peeled onion stuck with a clove.

Make the soup

  1. Melt the butter or dripping in a pan and stir in the flour.

  2. Cook for a few minutes without browning.

  3. Gradually add the fish stock and fish to the butter mixture.

  4. Let it simmer for 30 minutes.

  5. Pass the soup through a sieve and return it to the pot.

  6. Season to taste with salt, pepper, and grated nutmeg.

Serve

  1. Serve with fried bread croutons.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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
Provides the main flavour and the flakes that give the soup its body.
Butter or dripping
Carries the flour and adds richness and a rounded flavour to the base.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, lightly bodied soup when cooked with the fat.
Milk
Adds creaminess and softness, mellowing the fish flavour.
Onion
Adds savoury, aromatic sweetness to the stock as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cook the flour without browning. Flour must cook in the hot fat for a few minutes to lose its raw taste and thicken well. Browning it changes the colour and flavour, and adding liquid too early leaves lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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