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Baked Salmon

A whole salmon stuffed with buttered bread, baked with a butter‑flour gravy, served with boiled potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Sage and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 887 recipes. Both carry 3-hexenal, which smells apple, fruity. The science ↓

Baked Salmon

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Rub the salmon inside and out with salt and pepper.

  2. Stuff the fish with buttered bread slices moistened with hot milk or water, adding sage or thyme if desired.

  3. Tie the fish with thread to keep the stuffing in, then remove the thread before serving.

Bake

  1. Place muffin rings or a trivet in a dripping pan and put the fish on top.

  2. Dot the fish with butter, dredge with flour, and add 1 pint of hot water to the pan for basting.

  3. Bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 1 hour, basting frequently.

  4. In the last few minutes, fry the lemon slices in the pan, then sprinkle with 1 teaspoon of flour and a small piece of butter. Stir until browned, then add ½ cup of boiling water and stir until smooth.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Strain the gravy over the fish and serve with boiled potatoes.

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. Sage + lemontop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together887 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  2. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Pepper + sagetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,388 recipes

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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 provides the flesh that cooks through in the oven.
Bread
Soaks up moisture and hot liquid in the stuffing, keeping the interior of the fish tender.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the fish and helps the surface brown during baking.
Wheat flour
Thickens the pan juices into a smooth gravy as it cooks with the butter.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter until browned. Cooking flour in fat until it browns develops flavour and removes raw starch taste; adding the boiling water too early leads to lumps, so stir until smooth.

Swap the sage

The recipe marks sage as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, pepper, bread, milk, butter, flour, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Sagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, pepper, bread, milk, butter, flour, lemon. 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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