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Cream Salmon or Trout

A creamy fish stew made with salmon or trout, cream, butter, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Cream Salmon or Trout

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut off the head and tail of the fish.

  2. Place the fish in boiling water with salt and simmer for 5 minutes, then drain.

  3. In a stew pan, combine the fish with mace, nutmeg, and cayenne.

Stew the fish

  1. Cover the fish with cream and add bits of butter.

  2. Cover the pan and let the fish stew for 10 minutes.

  3. Keep the fish hot while making the sauce.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Mix flour with milk until smooth, then stir into the cream.

  2. Add lemon juice, bring to a boil, strain, and pour over the fish.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon or trout
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes tender as it simmers and stews.
Cream
Provides richness and moisture, forming the base of the sauce around the fish.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the stewed fish and sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream and milk mixture into a smooth, body-rich sauce.
Milk
Thins the flour mixture so it blends smoothly and adds moisture to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich cream sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and milk into the cream. Flour clumps if added dry or unmixed, so it must be blended smoothly with milk first. Then the sauce must be kept moving and brought to a boil so the starch fully thickens and cooks out its raw taste.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (fish, nutmeg, pepper, cream, butter, flour, milk):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, nutmeg, pepper, cream, butter, flour, 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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