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Baked Salmon

A whole salmon baked with onion, parsley, bread crumbs, and served with a sauce of milk, flour, butter, egg, and ketchup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Spread chopped onion, parsley, and fine bread crumbs over the top of the fish.

  3. Moisten the fish with water mixed with vinegar.

  4. Bake until tender.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk, flour, and butter.

  2. Cook the mixture until thickened.

  3. Stir in chopped hard-boiled egg and tomato ketchup.

  4. Serve the sauce in a sauce boat alongside the salmon.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Whole salmon
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked through by baking.
Bread crumbs
Form a crust on the fish top and absorb moisture as they bake.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens when heated with flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk and butter mixture into a smooth sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce.
Hard-boiled egg
Adds body and a soft, rich texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the milk, flour and butter until thickened. Flour thickens liquid only when heated enough for its starch to swell. Stopping too early leaves a thin sauce, while overcooking can make it stick or scorch on the base of the pan.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, onion, bread, vinegar, milk, flour, butter):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Cinnamonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, onion, bread, vinegar, milk, flour, butter. 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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