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Stewed Haddock with Brown Sauce

A stewed haddock fillet served with a brown sauce made from fish stock, butter, flour, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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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 ↓

Stewed Haddock with Brown Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stock

  1. Combine the heads and bones of the fish with the sliced onion, peppercorns, parsley, and mace in a saucepan.

  2. Cover with cold water and bring to a boil, cooking for 20 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture.

Make the sauce and cook the fish

  1. Melt the butter in a stew pan.

  2. Stir in the flour until nicely browned.

  3. Brush the fillets with beaten egg.

  4. Brown the fillets in the butter on both sides.

  5. Remove the fish from the pan.

  6. Gradually add the strained stock to the pan, stirring continuously.

  7. Replace the fish in the pan and simmer for 15 minutes.

  8. If desired, add ketchup and chili vinegar.

Serve

  1. Arrange the fillets on a serving dish.

  2. Pour the sauce in the center.

  3. Garnish with parsley.

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. Haddock + saucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together200 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Browns in the butter and thickens the stock into a smooth brown sauce.
Butter
Carries the browning and gives the fillets and sauce a rich flavor.
Haddock fillets
Provide the flaky white fish that is browned and then gently simmered in the sauce.
Haddock heads and bones
Release gelatin and savory flavor into the stock that forms the sauce base.

The step that matters

Stirring in the stock gradually. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the flour smoothly dispersed, preventing lumps and producing an even, glossy sauce.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (haddock, parsley, butter, onion, flour, lemon, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, parsley, butter, onion, flour, lemon, sauce. 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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