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Salmon, Matelote of

Salmon simmered in brown sauce with onions, claret, sugar, pepper, salt, nutmeg, anchovy essence, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and anchovy are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Salmon, Matelote of

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Boil the salmon slices until cooked, then drain and place them on a dish.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, heat the brown sauce with fried button onions for 10 minutes.

  2. Add the claret, sugar, pepper, salt, nutmeg and anchovy essence to the sauce.

  3. Stir the sauce over heat until thick and it coats the spoon.

  4. Remove from the heat and stir in the fresh butter until melted.

  5. Optionally, add mushrooms or oysters to the sauce.

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. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  3. Salmon + anchovytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together535 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 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, cooked until it flakes.
Brown sauce
Provides the thick, savoury base that the sauce is built on.
Button onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they cook into the sauce.
Claret
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy finish to the finished sauce.
Anchovy essence
Adds a savoury, salty depth that rounds out the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the butter off the heat. Once the sauce is thick, removing it from the heat before adding butter lets the butter melt in gently. Over direct heat the fat can separate, leaving the sauce greasy and dull.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

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