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To Dey Haddock

Haddock that is cleaned, salted, hung to dry, then browned before the fire with butter and served with egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Haddock and sauce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 200 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Dey Haddock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Choose haddock weighing 2-3 pounds.

  2. Remove the gills, eyes, and entrails.

  3. Clean the blood from the backbone.

  4. Wipe the fish dry.

Salt and hang

  1. Sprinkle salt inside the bodies and eyes.

  2. Lay the fish on a board overnight.

  3. Hang the fish in a dry place for 3-4 days until ready to eat.

  4. Skin the fish.

Coat and cook

  1. Rub the fish with egg.

  2. Coat the fish with bread crumbs.

  3. Place the fish before the fire.

  4. Baste the fish with butter until browned.

Serve

  1. Serve with egg sauce.

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 + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
The main protein, whose flesh is firmed and preserved by salting and drying.
Egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the fish so the coating holds during cooking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating once the fish is cooked.
Butter
Adds fat that carries heat and promotes browning while basting.

The step that matters

Hang the fish in a dry place. Salt draws water out of the flesh, and dry air removes more, so the fish firms and keeps longer. A damp place can let it spoil instead of drying.

“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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