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Another Way to Bake Haddocks

Baked haddocks stuffed with breadcrumb mixture, simmered in a sauce of haddock heads, onions, parsley, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Another Way to Bake Haddocks

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sauce

  1. Wash and scrape the scales off the haddocks, leaving the heads on.

  2. Make a sauce by simmering the haddock heads with sliced onions, parsley, pepper, and salt.

  3. Add a small haddock to the sauce and boil until cooked.

  4. Strain the sauce.

Stuff and bake

  1. Pick the meat from the boiled haddock bones and mix it with bread crumbs, chopped parsley, butter, salt, and pepper to form the stuffing.

  2. Stuff the haddocks with the breadcrumb mixture.

  3. Place the stuffed haddocks in a deep dish with the sauce.

  4. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until cooked through.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 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 main body of the dish, with the flaked meat providing the filling and the bones and heads flavouring the sauce.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the flaked fish into a stuffing that holds its shape.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing, improving flavour and mouthfeel.
Onions
Release sweetness and aroma into the sauce as they simmer with the haddock heads.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. Fish cooks quickly and turns dry and tough if overbaked, while underbaking leaves the stuffing and the thick parts of the fish unsafe to eat. Checking the thickest part of the fish keeps it moist and fully cooked.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, parsley, pepper, bread, butter, white wine):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Carrotfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, parsley, pepper, bread, butter, white wine. 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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