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Broiled Salmon

Broiled salmon slices seasoned, floured, and cooked on a gridiron or wrapped in paper, served with anchovy or caper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Salmon and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 535 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Broiled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut salmon into slices 1 to 1.5 inches thick.

  2. Dry the slices with a cloth and season with salt and pepper.

  3. Dredge the slices in sifted flour.

Broil

  1. Grease a gridiron with suet and broil the slices until cooked.

  2. Alternatively, butter sheets of white paper, wrap each slice, and twist the ends.

  3. Broil the wrapped slices gently over a clear fire.

Serve

  1. Serve with anchovy or caper sauce, adding chopped herbs and spices if desired.

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. Salmon + anchovytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together535 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Pepper + anchovytop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

Flour and butter 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, cooking to a flaky texture when broiled.
Sifted flour
Dry coating that helps the outside of the slices brown and seal during broiling.
Suet
Fat used to grease the gridiron so the fish releases cleanly and does not stick.
Anchovy or caper sauce
Adds salty, acidic flavour to balance the rich, mild fish.

The step that matters

Broil the wrapped slices gently over a clear fire. Gentle heat cooks the salmon through without drying it out. Strong, fierce heat can scorch the paper or coating and toughen the flesh before the centre is done.

“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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