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Stewed Salmon

A salmon stew with carrots, onions, thyme, bay leaves, nutmeg, peppercorns, and stock, served over a vegetable purée.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,563 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Stewed Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scale and wash the salmon carefully.

  2. Lard the fish finely and place it in a stewpan.

Stew and strain

  1. Add the stock, carrots, onions, thyme, bay leaves, nutmeg, peppercorns, and salt.

  2. Simmer gently for about 2 hours.

  3. Remove the fish and strain the sauce, discarding any fat.

Glaze and serve

  1. Reduce the sauce to a glaze and pour it over the fish.

  2. Serve the salmon on a purée of green peas, asparagus, or your preferred vegetable.

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. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,907 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Carrot + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,424 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

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

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, turning tender and flaky as it gently simmers.
Clear stock
Provides the liquid that cooks the fish gently and forms the base of the sauce.
Carrots
Add sweetness and body to the stewing liquid as they soften and release flavour.
Onions
Contribute savoury depth and aroma to the stock as they cook down.
Dried thyme
Adds an herbal aroma that infuses the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for about 2 hours. At a rolling boil the proteins contract and toughen and the fish breaks apart. A gentle simmer keeps the salmon moist and tender while the sauce slowly develops flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, carrot, thyme, nutmeg):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, carrot, thyme, nutmeg. 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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