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Fillets of Haddock with Tomato

A haddock fillet cooked in a tomato and stock sauce, served with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Fillets of Haddock with Tomato

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish and stock

  1. Wash, skin, and fillet the haddocks, then make ½ pint of stock from the bones.

Make the sauce

  1. Mince the onion and fry it in a pan with the butter until browned.

  2. Add the stock and minced tomatoes to the pan and simmer for 15 minutes.

  3. Rub the mixture through a wire sieve and return the sauce to the pan.

  4. Mix the cornflour with a little cold water and add it to the sauce.

  5. Season with lemon juice, salt, and pepper to taste.

  6. Adjust the sauce color to a nice pink.

Cook and serve

  1. Roll up the fillets and place them in the sauce, simmering slowly for 15 minutes.

  2. Carefully dish up the fillets.

  3. Pour the sauce over the fillets, sprinkle with chopped parsley, and serve hot.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Haddock
Forms the flaky main protein that cooks gently in the sauce.
Fish stock
Provides the liquid base and savoury flavour for the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness while the onion browns.
Cornflour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Tomatoes
Add acidity, colour and body to the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the cornflour mixture. Cornflour must be mixed smoothly with cold water first, then stirred into simmering liquid. Added dry or lumpy, it clumps and the sauce turns grainy instead of silky and smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, fish, tomato, butter, pepper, lemon, parsley):

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, fish, tomato, butter, pepper, lemon, parsley. 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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