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Baked Salmon with Cream Sauce

A whole salmon baked with butter and cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Salmon with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Butter a sheet of parchment paper on both sides.

  2. Wrap the fish in the paper, pinning the ends securely.

Bake

  1. Place in a baking pan.

  2. Pour 6-7 tablespoons of cream over the fish.

  3. Bake until cooked through.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Salmon + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Whole salmon
Forms the main body of the dish and firms and flakes as its proteins set with heat.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, helping the fish stay tender while it bakes.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. Salmon dries out and turns firm and chalky when overcooked, because its proteins tighten as they heat. Check for the flesh to turn opaque and flake easily, and stop baking once it does.

“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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