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 ↓
Boiling Fish
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the fish
Clean the haddock after gutting it and soak it in a mixture of salt and water for about 10 minutes.
Drain the fish and place it in a fish kettle with enough cold water to cover two-thirds of the fish.
Boil
Skim off any scum that rises to the surface as it cooks.
Cover the kettle and boil gently for 5 to 10 minutes until the fish is cooked through.
Adjust cooking time based on the weight of the fish.
Serve
Serve garnished with scraped horse radish or egg balls, and with oyster sauce, melted butter, or shrimp sauce.
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.
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Haddock + saucetop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together200 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,057 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Horse + radishtop 4% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together529 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).
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Haddock + anchovytop 6% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together75 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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Oyster + anchovytop 8% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together603 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
- Haddock
- Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into flaky, tender flesh with gentle heat.
- Coarse sea salt
- Seasons the fish during the brief soak, flavouring it from within before boiling.
The step that matters
Boil gently until cooked through. Vigorous boiling breaks up delicate fish flesh and toughens it, so a gentle simmer under a lid cooks it evenly while keeping it moist and intact.
Swap the radish
The recipe marks radish as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, butter, horse, egg, oyster, sauce, anchovy):
- Mustardfits better
- Shallotfits better
- Potatofits better
- Radishthe original
Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, butter, horse, egg, oyster, sauce, anchovy. 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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