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Roasted Salmon

Roasted salmon with a parsley, shallot, mushroom, butter, and wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Roasted Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Rub the salmon with coarse sea salt.

  2. Roast the salmon on a spit, basting continuously with sweet oil or butter.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine parsley, shallot, mushrooms, butter, black pepper, and white wine.

  2. Boil the mixture for 30 minutes.

  3. Strain the mixture through a sieve.

  4. Mix in the olive oil 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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + white winetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 and carries the flavor of the salt and basting fat.
Butter rolled in flour
Thickens the sauce as the flour-coated butter melts and mixes into the liquid.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma, and its liquid reduces during boiling to concentrate flavor.
Mushrooms
Contribute earthy savory flavor to the sauce as they simmer.
Shallot
Adds a mild sweet-savory aroma to the sauce as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce for 30 minutes. A long boil concentrates the wine and vegetables, so the sauce can turn too strong or reduce too far if left unattended. Watching the volume keeps the flavor balanced before straining.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, shallot, mushroom, flour, pepper, white wine):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Thymefits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, shallot, mushroom, flour, pepper, white 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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