Skip to main content
Main

To Bake Salmon

Baked salmon, optionally filled with forcemeat and garnished with oysters, served with a butter, port wine, ketchup, and lemon sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Salmon and oyster work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 672 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

To Bake Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. If using a small fish, turn the tail to the mouth and skewer it.

  2. If using a large fish, cut it into slices.

  3. Fill the belly with forcemeat or coat the fish with it.

Bake

  1. Stick bits of butter around the salmon and add oysters if desired.

  2. Baste occasionally with butter while baking.

  3. When one side is brown, carefully turn the fish to brown the other side.

  4. Once both sides are brown, remove the fish from the baking dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, mix melted butter with port wine, ketchup, and lemon juice, and pour over the fish.

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. Salmon + oystertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together672 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  2. Fish + oystertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together496 recipes

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

  3. Salmon + fishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,078 recipes

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

  4. Port wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  5. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 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, cooking to a firm, flaky texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture while basting, and helps the surface brown.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Ketchup
Adds sweetness and tang to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter sauce.

The step that matters

Turning the fish to brown the second side. Turning carefully keeps the delicate flesh from tearing or falling apart, and the fish must be cooked through so the flesh flakes but does not dry out.

“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.

More baked salmon recipes

Trout 17with Breadcrumbs 8with Cream Sauce 7in Slices 4with Mashed Potatoes 4Over Mashed Potatoes 3 See all 70 →

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesSalmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesFried FishFried Fish120 recipes