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Baked Salmon

A baked salmon dish with butter, eggs, breadcrumbs, and a pickle‑parsley sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Salmon

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the salmon

  1. Drain the liquid from the can of salmon.

  2. Break the salmon into pieces.

  3. Mix in the melted butter, salt, pepper, eggs, bread crumbs, and a little milk.

  4. Transfer the mixture to a buttered bowl or baking powder can.

Bake

  1. Place the bowl in a pan of boiling water.

  2. Cook in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine the drawn butter, salmon liquid, beaten egg, pepper, salt, chopped pickle, and minced parsley in a saucepan.

  2. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  3. Pour it over the fish or serve it as gravy.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a firm, sliceable loaf when baked.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the baked salmon a softer, sliceable body.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the salmon and forms the base of the sauce.
Salmon liquid
Carries the canned fish's flavor into the sauce, adding savoriness.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture in a water bath. Gentle, indirect heat from the boiling water keeps the egg-set salmon custard tender; direct high heat would overcook the eggs and make it dry and rubbery.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, pepper, egg, bread, milk):

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Capersfits less well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, pepper, egg, bread, milk. 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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