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Salmon

Baked salmon slices topped with a force‑meat of salmon, eel, mushrooms, spices, and a roll crumb batter, finished with butter, wine, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the force-meat

  1. Cut the salmon into 1-inch thick slices.

  2. Make a force-meat by mixing salmon flesh, eel meat, mushrooms, pepper, salt, nutmeg, and cloves until fine.

  3. Boil the roll crumb in milk, then beat it with 4 eggs until thick and let it cool.

  4. Add 4 raw eggs to the cooled mixture and combine well.

  5. Remove the skin from the salmon slices and lay them in a dish.

Assemble and bake

  1. Cover each slice with the force-meat and pour melted butter over them, then sprinkle with bread crumbs.

  2. Arrange oysters around the dish and bake in the oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

Finish and serve

  1. Once done, pour melted butter mixed with boiled red wine and lemon juice over the dish and serve hot.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,663 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the force-meat and set it firm when baked, giving a sliceable texture.
Eel meat
Adds richness and fat, giving the force-meat a softer, more luxurious texture.
Bread crumbs
Form a golden crust on top and absorb the melted butter during baking.
Milk
Softens the roll crumb so it blends smoothly into the force-meat.
Melted butter
Adds fat for moisture and richness, and helps the top brown.

The step that matters

Let the cooled mixture rest before adding the raw eggs. Raw eggs added to a hot mixture can scramble or cook unevenly, so the base must be cool before they are combined to keep the force-meat smooth and well bound.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, meat, mushroom, pepper, nutmeg, milk, egg):

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Cinnamonfits about as well
  3. Parsleyfits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, meat, mushroom, pepper, nutmeg, milk, egg. 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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