Name: Broiled Salmon with Maître d'Hôtel Butter
Ingredients: 1 salmon fillet; 2 tablespoons Maître d'Hôtel butter; salt to taste; pepper to taste

Why it works: Salmon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,481 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Broiled Salmon with Maître d'Hôtel Butter

Ingredients

1 salmon fillet
2 tablespoons Maître d'Hôtel butter
salt to taste
pepper to taste

Directions

Preheat the broiler.
Season the salmon fillet with salt and pepper.
Place the salmon under the broiler for about 5-7 minutes, until cooked through.
Remove from the broiler and top with Maître d'Hôtel butter before serving.

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.

Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,481 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Salmon + peppertop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together5,446 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon fillet: Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks through.
Maître d'hôtel butter: Adds fat and herby, savoury flavour, melting over the warm fish as it is served.

The step that matters

Broiling until cooked through. Broiler heat is intense and fillets are thin, so the fish can dry out quickly. Checking for opaque flesh that flakes easily, rather than relying only on the stated time, helps keep it moist.

“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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Broiled Salmon with Maître d'Hôtel Butter