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Salmon, with Matelotb Sauce

A salmon dish served with a sauce of roux, onions, wine, mushrooms, herbs, anchovy essence, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and mushroom are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 12,525 recipes. Both carry trans-2-decenal, which smells waxy, orange. The science ↓

Salmon, with Matelotb Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Prepare a marinade and stew the salmon in it until cooked.

  2. Carefully remove the scales from the salmon and keep it warm by pouring the marinade over it.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt ½ cup of butter and add 2 tablespoons of flour to make a roux.

  2. Once the roux begins to color, add the chopped onions and stir until softened.

  3. Pour in the red wine and add a few tablespoons of the marinade, mushroom trimmings, parsley, green onions, and seasonings.

  4. Add ¼ teaspoon of sugar to balance the acidity of the wine and skim off any grease.

  5. If the sauce is too thin, mix a small piece of butter with flour and add it to the sauce along with the remaining butter, essence of anchovies, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

Serve

  1. Drain the salmon and cover it with the strained 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. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

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

  3. Red wine + mushroomtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together720 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + parsleytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,132 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Forms the roux with flour and enriches the sauce with fat and flavor.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as a roux, and a flour-butter paste can further thicken it.
Red wine
Provides acidity and depth of flavor to the sauce.
Onions
Soften and sweeten as they cook, building the base flavor of the sauce.
Sugar
Balances the acidity of the wine.
Salmon
The main protein, cooked gently by stewing in the marinade.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour and butter. Adding flour to a sauce that is too thin must be cooked through and whisked in, or it stays pasty and tastes raw. Adding it to a hot sauce in small amounts helps prevent lumps.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, flour, onion, red wine, mushroom, sugar):

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, flour, onion, red wine, mushroom, sugar. 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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