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Salmon with Lemon Sauce

A salmon dish served with a lemon sauce made from butter, capers, egg yolks, raisins, flour, sugar, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 10,173 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Salmon with Lemon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the salmon

  1. Cook the salmon in a pot of salted water with vinegar, allspice, bay leaf, onion, carrot, and celery until tender.

  2. Remove the fish and strain the cooking liquid.

Make the sauce

  1. In a double boiler, combine butter, capers, egg yolks, raisins, flour, sugar, and lemon juice.

  2. Cook the mixture until thick, stirring constantly.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the salmon and garnish with parsley and lemon slices.

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 + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Allspice + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,021 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Allspice + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,422 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Onion + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Celery + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together405 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 body of the dish, cooked gently until tender in the poaching liquid.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they heat and set, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the sauce.
Flour
Helps stabilise and thicken the sauce so it holds together.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Cooking the sauce until thick. Egg yolks can curdle or scramble if overheated. A double boiler and constant stirring keep the heat gentle, so the yolks thicken the sauce smoothly.

Swap the allspice

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, vinegar, onion, carrot, celery, butter, capers):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, vinegar, onion, carrot, celery, butter, capers. 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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