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Baked Salmon Trout

A baked salmon trout served with a creamy parsley sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Salmon Trout

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Place the salmon trout in a baking dish and season with coarse sea salt.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Bake slowly, basting often with a mixture of butter and water.

  2. In a saucepan, combine cream and hot water to prevent clotting.

  3. Stir in melted butter, flour, and chopped parsley into the cream mixture.

  4. Heat the cream mixture in a double boiler until thickened.

  5. Add the gravy from the baking dish to the cream mixture and boil once.

Serve

  1. Serve the trout on a hot dish and pour the sauce around it.

  2. Garnish with sprigs of 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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Salmon + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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 trout
Forms the main protein that cooks gently and stays moist when basted.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the basting liquid and the sauce.
Cream
Gives the sauce a smooth, rich body once heated and thickened.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so the sauce becomes smooth and coats the fish.

The step that matters

Heat the cream mixture in a double boiler. Gentle indirect heat keeps the cream from scorching or curdling while the flour thickens it. Boiling it hard after adding the pan gravy, or heating it too quickly, can make the sauce grainy or separate.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, cream, 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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