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Fresh Salmon Stewed

A stewed salmon dish with lemon, shallots, parsley, and a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Fresh Salmon Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Sprinkle a little coarse sea salt over the salmon slices.

  2. Let the salmon rest for 30 minutes, then turn and rest for another 30 minutes.

  3. Wash, drain, and dry the salmon slices with a clean towel.

  4. Spread fresh butter over the strainer of a large fish kettle.

  5. Lay the salmon pieces on the buttered strainer.

  6. Cover the salmon with thin slices of lemon, shallots, parsley, and whole peppercorns.

Stew the salmon

  1. Set the kettle over live coals.

  2. Cover the kettle with hot ashes, ensuring even heat for 1 hour.

  3. Remove the lemon, shallots, and parsley from the kettle before serving.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, mix ¼ pound of fresh butter with 1 tablespoon of flour in a quart tin vessel.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of water and the seasoning from the fish kettle to the sauce.

  3. Cover the sauce vessel and place it in boiling water.

  4. Shake the vessel over the fire until it boils.

  5. Pour the sauce into a sauce-boat.

  6. Serve the stewed salmon garnished with sprigs of curled parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  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

Salmon
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently by steam and heat from below.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the fish from drying as it cooks.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the butter into a smooth sauce as it heats.

The step that matters

Covering the kettle with hot ashes for 1 hour. Gentle, even heat cooks the fish through slowly. Too much heat dries or breaks the flesh, while too little leaves it undercooked.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, shallot, parsley, sauce, flour):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, shallot, parsley, sauce, flour. 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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