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Smoked Haddock Filleted

Smoked haddock fillets baked with butter, parsley, pepper, lemon juice, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Smoked Haddock Filleted

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the smoked haddock in a baking tin with a little water and cook for 10 minutes.

  3. Remove the skin and bones from the fish, then cut it into fillets.

Bake and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a baking dish, add the fish and parsley, and season with pepper.

  2. Baste the fish with butter and cook for another 10 minutes, basting at short intervals.

  3. Transfer the fish to a hot serving dish, add a little lemon juice to the sauce, pour it over the fish, and serve.

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. Parsley + peppertop 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 + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Smoked haddock
Forms the main body of the dish, flaking into tender fillets when cooked gently.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and forms the sauce that keeps the fish from drying out.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the buttery sauce and balances the smoky fish.

The step that matters

Basting the fish at short intervals. Repeated spooning of hot butter over the fillets keeps the surface moist while the fish cooks through, preventing it from drying out in the oven.

“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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