Name: Stuffed Haddock
Ingredients: 1 fresh haddock; ½ cup bread crumbs; ¼ cup suet; 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; 1 tablespoon milk; pepper to taste; salt to taste; 1 egg

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 ↓

Stuffed Haddock

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

Wash the fish thoroughly.
In a bowl, mix together the bread crumbs, suet, egg, milk, parsley, pepper, and salt.

Stuff and truss

Stuff the fish with the mixture and sew it up.
Truss the fish in the shape of the letter 'G'.

Bake

Brush the fish with milk, sprinkle with bread crumbs, and place small pieces of butter on top.
Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

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.

Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,588 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together20,964 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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, cooking up moist and flaky under the stuffing.
Bread crumbs: Absorb moisture and bind the stuffing, and brown lightly on the crust.
Suet: Adds fat to the stuffing, keeping it moist and rich as it cooks.
Egg: Binds the stuffing so it holds together when sliced.
Milk: Moistens the stuffing and the surface, helping the top brown evenly.

The step that matters

Bake in a preheated oven at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes. Fish cooks quickly and turns dry or rubbery if overbaked. Starting in a fully preheated oven and checking for an opaque, flaky centre helps keep the flesh moist while the stuffing heats through.