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Haddock Pie

A baked pie with haddock, onion, parsley, butter, stock, wine, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Haddock Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean, skin, and wash the haddocks. Remove the heads and tails, and cut the fish into 2 or 3 pieces.

  2. Season the fish with minced onion, parsley, salt, and pepper.

  3. Make forcemeat balls using the small boiled haddock.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a dish, place bits of butter, add the fish and forcemeat balls, then pour in the white stock and white wine.

  2. Put puff pastry around the edge of the dish and cover it with more puff pastry.

  3. Bake until the pastry is golden and 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. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Onion + white winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,535 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

Haddocks
Forms the main body of the pie, becoming flaky and tender as it cooks.
Puff pastry
Forms a crisp, golden crust that seals the dish and browns in the oven.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the fish stay succulent under the pastry.
White stock
Adds moisture and savoury flavour, keeping the fish from drying out while it bakes.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the rich fish and sauce.

The step that matters

Bake until the pastry is golden and cooked through. The pastry must be fully baked to become crisp and flaky; underbaked puff pastry stays pale and doughy. The fish should also reach a flaky, opaque state without overcooking.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against haddock, parsley, pepper, 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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