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Saumon a LA Braze

A salmon stuffed with eel, anchovies, herbs, and spices, braised in butter, fish broth, and Madeira wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 14,036 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Slice the eel open.

  2. Remove the bone and meat from the eel.

  3. Chop the eel meat finely with anchovies, lemon peel, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, and the yolk of the hard-boiled egg.

  4. Mix the ingredients and roll the mixture in a piece of butter.

Stuff and make the sauce

  1. Stuff the mixture into the belly of the salmon and sew the belly closed.

  2. Place the salmon in a large oval stewpan.

  3. Melt ½ pound of butter in a stewpan.

  4. Add 2 tablespoons of flour and stir until slightly brown.

  5. Add 2 cups of fish broth and 2 cups of Madeira wine.

  6. Season with pepper, salt, mace, and cloves.

  7. Add an onion and a bunch of sweet herbs, then stir.

  8. Pour the sauce over the salmon and cover tightly.

Stew and serve

  1. Let it stew.

  2. Add fresh and pickled mushrooms, truffles, or morels.

  3. Let them cook until the fish is fully done.

  4. Carefully remove the salmon and place it on a dish.

  5. Pour the sauce over it.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,036 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together27,039 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together5,062 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together11,318 recipes

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

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 is the flesh that is cooked through by stewing.
Eel
Chopped and mixed into the stuffing, adding richness and a moist, savoury filling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing and to the sauce base.
Flour
Browned in butter to thicken the sauce.
Madeira wine
Adds body and a sweet, fortified flavour to the stewing sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and texture to the stew.

The step that matters

Stir the flour until slightly brown. Cooking flour in butter until it is only lightly browned thickens the sauce and gives it a nutty flavour; stopping too early leaves a raw, pasty taste and weak thickening.

Flavor stand-ins for the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, pepper, parsley, egg, salmon, butter, flour):

  1. Dillbetter flavor fit
  2. Thymeabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Tarragonabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, pepper, parsley, egg, salmon, butter, flour. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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