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Baked Haddock

A whole haddock stuffed with veal, ham, and breadcrumbs, baked until cooked.

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 gutting it and trimming it nicely.

  2. Fill the cavity with a mixture of veal, ham, and bread crumbs.

  3. Sew the fish closed with strong thread and shape it into a circle, placing the tail in its mouth.

  4. Rub the fish with butter or a mixture of beaten egg and flour, then sprinkle with bread crumbs.

Bake and serve

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

  2. Serve the fish on the baking tin or a platter, and consider mussel sauce as an accompaniment.

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, cooked whole so its flesh becomes flaky and moist.
Veal
Adds savoury meat flavour and body to the stuffing inside the fish.
Ham
Contributes salty, savoury flavour to the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices in the stuffing and form a crisp, golden crust on the outside.
Egg
Binds the flour coating so the crumbs stick and help the surface brown.

The step that matters

Sew the fish closed and shape it. The stitching must hold the stuffing in while the fish cooks, because the filling expands and loosens as it heats. Strong thread and a firm closure prevent the stuffing from spilling out during baking.

“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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