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To Cook Salmon

A grilled salmon fillet seasoned with salt, pepper, and French vinegar, served with parsley and gherkins or capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Cook Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Take a thick slice of salmon weighing one pound and cut it into two thin slices.

  2. Wash the salmon in a basin of cold water and dry it well with a cloth.

  3. Pour ½ cup of salad oil onto a plate and dip the salmon slices in the oil on both sides.

  4. Season both sides of the salmon with salt and pepper.

Grill and serve

  1. Heat a gridiron over the fire to prevent the fish from sticking.

  2. Place the salmon slices on the hot gridiron and grill for 15 minutes, turning occasionally.

  3. When the fish is pale brown and cooked through, remove the bone from each slice.

  4. Serve the salmon on a hot dish, garnished with parsley and gherkins 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. Parsley + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + caperstop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,088 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon (in the method)
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a flaky texture and pale brown surface.
Salad oil
Coats the salmon so it stays moist and helps prevent sticking on the grill.

The step that matters

Placing the salmon on the hot gridiron. The grill must be hot before the fish goes on, so the surface sears quickly and releases cleanly. A cold grill lets the salmon stick and tear, and the oil coating helps only if the grill is properly heated.

Swap the capers

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, vinegar, parsley):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, vinegar, parsley. 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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