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To Cook Haddock

A haddock cooked in a vinegar stock made with onions, turnip, carrot, herbs, peppercorns, and mace.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Cook Haddock

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the haddock and remove the eyes.

  2. Place the fish in a dish and pour vinegar over it.

  3. Let it marinate for at least 1 hour, turning occasionally.

Make the stock

  1. In a pot, boil onions, turnip, carrot, sweet herbs, peppercorns, and mace in 2 quarts of water for 1 hour to make stock.

  2. Strain the stock and return it to the pot.

  3. Add salt and French vinegar, and bring to a boil.

Poach the fish

  1. Add the haddock to the boiling stock, then reduce heat and let it simmer gently for 30 minutes or until cooked.

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. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + oniontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  5. Carrot + macetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,592 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Haddock (in the method)
Is the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks in the hot stock.
Vinegar
Acidity from the marinade and the stock helps firm the fish and adds a sharp, bright flavour.
Onions
Build the aromatic base of the stock, adding sweetness and savoury depth as they simmer.
Carrot
Adds natural sweetness and body to the stock as it simmers for an hour.

The step that matters

Simmer the haddock gently. At a hard boil the delicate flesh breaks apart and turns dry and tough. A gentle simmer cooks the fish evenly while keeping it moist and in neat pieces.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, onion, turnip, carrot):

  1. Celeryfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, onion, turnip, carrot. 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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