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Salmon Trout, Sauce for

A savory sauce made with ham, onion, garlic, shallot, butter, flour, stock, red wine, sugar, salt, and anchovies, served with salmon trout or eels.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Salmon Trout, Sauce for

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine ham, onion, cloves, pepper, shallot, and butter.

  2. Cook over low heat for a few minutes.

  3. Stir in flour and stock.

  4. Add red wine, sugar, salt, and anchovies.

  5. Bring the sauce to a boil and strain through a fine sieve.

Serve

  1. Serve with salmon trout or eels.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Onion + shallottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 recipes

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

  5. Clove + red winetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together849 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries the flavour of the aromatics in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth, body-giving sauce.
Stock
Forms the liquid base that the sauce is built on.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Anchovies
Contribute a savoury, salty depth that rounds out the sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour. Flour must be cooked in the fat before liquid is added, or it stays floury and clumps. Stirring it into the stock smoothly and then bringing the sauce to a boil lets the starch swell and thicken evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, clove, pepper, shallot, butter, flour, red wine):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, clove, pepper, shallot, butter, flour, red wine. 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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