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Salmon, Braized

A braised salmon served with a sauce of butter, capers, anchovy, mustard, soy sauce, cayenne, sherry, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Capers and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 624 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salmon, Braized

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and steam

  1. Wash the salmon in salted water and dry it with a cloth.

  2. Fold the salmon in oiled paper and place it on a drainer over fast-boiling water.

  3. Steam the salmon for 45 minutes until done.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, bruise the capers and stir them into the melted butter.

  2. Add anchovy, mustard, soy sauce, and cayenne to the butter and simmer for 3-4 minutes.

  3. Stir in sherry and lemon juice, then pour the sauce over the salmon 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. Capers + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together624 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Capers + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Salmon + anchovytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together535 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, cooked gently by steaming in oiled paper.
Melted butter
Provides fat and richness, carrying the flavours of the sauce.
Anchovy
Adds savoury depth to the sauce.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savoury depth to the sauce.
Sherry
Adds aromatic sweetness and acidity to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter sauce.

The step that matters

Steaming the salmon. Steam only gently over fast-boiling water so the salmon cooks through evenly. Overcooking dries out the flesh and firms it up too much, so check it is done rather than simply leaving it for the full time.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, capers, anchovy, sauce, pepper, sherry):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Mustardthe original
  4. Horseradishfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, capers, anchovy, sauce, pepper, sherry. 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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