Skip to main content
Main

Baked Salmon Trout

A baked salmon trout served with a cream and butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Salmon Trout

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Bake the fish

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Bake the salmon trout slowly, basting often with butter and water.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cream and hot water to prevent clotting.

  2. Stir in the melted butter, flour, and chopped parsley.

  3. Heat the mixture in a double boiler until thickened.

Serve

  1. Once the trout is cooked, place it on a hot dish and pour the sauce around it.

  2. Garnish with sprigs of parsley.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Salmon + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour 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

Salmon trout
Provides the main flesh, which stays moist when cooked slowly and basted.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, silky body.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor, and keeps the fish moist when basting.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma and flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Heating the cream sauce in the double boiler. Cream can curdle or clot when exposed to direct, strong heat. Gentle indirect heat from a double boiler lets the flour thicken the sauce smoothly without separating it.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, cream, butter, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, cream, butter, flour. 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.

You might also like

Salmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesCanned SalmonCanned Salmon14 recipesSmoked SalmonSmoked Salmon14 recipes