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To Fry Haddocks in Sauce

A fried haddock dish cooked in a butter‑flour sauce with onions, pepper, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

To Fry Haddocks in Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Skin and remove the heads from the haddocks.

  2. Cut each haddock into four pieces, then wash the pieces clean.

Make the sauce

  1. In a frying pan, melt the butter and stir in the flour until browned.

  2. Add the minced onions, pepper, and salt to the browned butter.

  3. Pour in enough boiling water to nearly cover the fish pieces and bring to a boil.

Cook and serve

  1. Add the fish to the pan.

  2. Cook until one side is done, then turn the fish and cook the other side.

  3. Serve hot.

  4. Pour the sauce over the fish.

  5. Garnish with parsley.

  6. If desired, omit the onions and substitute with mushroom catsup and lemon pickle.

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 + lemontop 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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

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 and cooks to a flaky texture.
Butter
Provides fat for frying and, when browned, adds a nutty flavour to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter into a roux that gives the sauce body.
Onions
Add savoury sweetness and aroma to the sauce as they cook.

The step that matters

Browning the flour in the butter. Cooking the butter and flour together until browned builds a roux with nutty flavour and thickening power. Stopping too early leaves a raw floury taste, while going too far scorches it and makes the sauce bitter.

“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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