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Salmon, Braised

Braised salmon served with a caper, anchovy, mustard, soy sauce, sherry, and lemon sauce.

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, Braised

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  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 a saucepan of boiling water.

Steam and make the sauce

  1. Steam the salmon for about 45 minutes until cooked through.

  2. Drain the salmon and prepare the sauce by bruising the capers and stirring them into the melted butter.

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

  4. Stir in the 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, cooking gently to a moist, flaky texture when steamed.
Capers
Add sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Butter
Provides fat and a rich, smooth body to the sauce.
Anchovy
Adds deep savoury flavour that rounds out the sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Brightens the sauce with acidity.

The step that matters

Steaming the salmon until just cooked through. Salmon becomes dry and firm when overcooked, because protein fibres tighten and squeeze out moisture. Steaming gently in oiled paper helps trap moisture, so checking doneness carefully matters.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, capers, butter, 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, capers, butter, 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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