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Salmon Sauce

A savory sauce made by stewing salmon in veal gravy and Harvey's sauce, thickened with arrowroot and flavored with capers, sherry, and gherkins.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Arrowroot and capers share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salmon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Stew the salmon

  1. Stew the salmon slices gently in a small kettle with a strainer, using veal gravy and Harvey's sauce for 20 minutes.

  2. Lift out the strainer with the fish and pour off the gravy into a stewpan.

  3. Return the strainer with the fish to keep warm.

Make the sauce

  1. Thicken the gravy with arrowroot and season with pepper and salt.

  2. Add capers, sherry, and sliced gherkins to the gravy.

  3. Simmer for 5 minutes and serve immediately, very hot.

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. Arrowroot + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Sauce + caperstop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Pepper + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Salmon + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together458 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Arrowroot + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together329 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Provides the main protein, which becomes tender when gently stewed in the gravy.
Veal gravy
Forms the savoury liquid base of the sauce.
Arrowroot
Thickens the gravy into a glossy sauce that coats the fish.
Capers
Add a sharp, salty acidity that cuts through the rich gravy.
Sherry
Adds acidity and a deeper, aromatic flavour to the sauce.
Harvey's sauce
Contributes a sweet-sour, savoury flavour to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with arrowroot. Arrowroot must be fully dispersed in cold liquid before adding it to hot gravy, or it clumps. It thickens best when held just at a simmer, and prolonged boiling can thin it out, so the sauce needs gentle heat once thickened.

Swap the arrowroot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, veal, sauce, pepper, capers, sherry):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Arrowrootthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, veal, sauce, pepper, capers, sherry. 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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