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Salmon, with Hollandaise Sauce

Canned salmon served with Hollandaise sauce, seasoned with salt and pepper, garnished with parsley or capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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 ↓

Salmon, with Hollandaise Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Heat a little butter in a frying pan.

  2. Add the canned salmon and cook until heated thoroughly.

  3. Transfer the salmon to a serving dish.

  4. Season with coarse sea salt and black pepper to taste.

  5. Serve with Hollandaise sauce, cream sauce, or drawn butter, garnished with parsley or capers.

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 + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

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

  5. Salmon + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Canned salmon
Provides the main protein and flesh of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and helps warm the salmon in the pan without sticking.
Hollandaise sauce
Adds richness and a tangy, creamy coating over the salmon.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Dillfits less well

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