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Baked Haddock

A whole haddock stuffed with veal, ham, and breadcrumbs, baked after basting with butter or egg‑flour batter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Haddock

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the fish by trimming, scraping, and gutting it carefully.

  2. Prepare a stuffing with chopped veal, ham, and bread crumbs.

  3. Fill the fish with the stuffing and sew it up with strong thread.

  4. Shape the fish into a circle, placing its tail in its mouth.

  5. If using two fish, lay them tail to head in the dish.

Bake and serve

  1. Baste the fish with butter or a batter made from egg and flour.

  2. Sprinkle additional bread crumbs on top.

  3. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C) and bake for about 1 hour.

  4. Serve on the baking tin or a larger dish.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Ham + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  3. Fish + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

Fish
Forms the main body of the dish and provides the flesh that cooks through in the oven.
Veal
Adds savoury body and moisture to the stuffing as it cooks inside the fish.
Ham
Adds salty, savoury flavour to the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the stuffing, giving it a soft texture.
Egg
Helps bind the basting batter so it coats the fish and sets as it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the basting batter so it clings to the fish and browns lightly.

The step that matters

Basting the fish. A thin coat of butter or egg-and-flour batter keeps the surface from drying out during the long bake and helps it brown. Uneven coverage can leave dry patches.

“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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