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Salmon En Casserole

A baked salmon dish with onions, carrots, parsley, potatoes, and a buttery sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Salmon En Casserole

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

  1. Cut the salmon into pieces, wash, and wipe it dry.

  2. Rub the salmon with flour.

Cook the vegetables

  1. Melt the butter in a frying pan and add the sliced onion, carrot, parsley, and bay leaf.

  2. Cook until slightly browned.

Bake and serve

  1. Transfer the cooked vegetables to a casserole with the salmon.

  2. Add 1 pint of water, cover, and bake at 400°F (200°C) for 45 minutes.

  3. Add the potatoes, season with salt and pepper, and cook until done.

  4. Add a few grains of cayenne pepper before serving.

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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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, flaking into tender pieces as it cooks through.
Flour
Coats the fish and thickens the cooking liquid, giving the sauce body.
Potatoes
Starch that absorbs the cooking liquid and gives the casserole a soft, hearty texture.
Butter
Fat that carries the aroma of the vegetables and helps them brown in the pan.
Onion
Browns to add sweetness and savory depth to the base.

The step that matters

Cook the vegetables until slightly browned. Browning the onion, carrot, and herbs in butter builds flavor through the Maillard reaction. Pale vegetables taste flat, while over-browned ones turn bitter.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, carrot, parsley, pepper, potato, butter, flour):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, carrot, parsley, pepper, potato, butter, 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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