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Baked Salmon Trout

A baked salmon trout served with a creamy butter sauce and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream 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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Place salmon trout in baking dish and season with coarse sea salt.

Bake and baste

  1. Baste fish often with mixture of butter and water while baking.

Make the sauce

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

  2. Stir in melted butter, flour, and chopped parsley into cream mixture.

  3. Heat cream mixture in double boiler, adding fish drippings.

  4. Bring to a boil to thicken sauce.

Serve

  1. Once trout is cooked, place on serving dish and pour 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. Butter + creamtop 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
Is the main protein, cooked gently in the oven until flaky.
Butter
Adds richness and helps baste the fish, keeping its surface moist as it bakes.
Cream
Forms the base of the sauce, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Flour
Thickens the cream sauce when it is heated and brought to a boil.
Fish drippings (in the method)
Add savoury flavour to the sauce from the cooking juices of the trout.

The step that matters

Bring the sauce to a boil. Flour needs to reach a boil in the cream to thicken properly. Heating too gently leaves the sauce thin, while cream left at high heat for too long can scorch or separate.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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

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