Skip to main content
Main

To Bake Salmon

Baked salmon with forcemeat stuffing, butter, optional oysters, and a sauce of port wine, ketchup, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 the fish

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

  2. Stuff the belly with forcemeat or dip slices in forcemeat.

  3. Place bits of butter around the salmon and add oysters if desired.

Bake

  1. Baste occasionally with butter while baking.

  2. When one side is brown, carefully turn it over.

  3. Once the second side is brown, remove it from the baking dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, mix melted butter with port wine, ketchup, and lemon juice, then 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. Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,184 recipes

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

  3. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Port wine + ketchuptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Oyster + ketchuptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together318 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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 flaky texture when baked.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the surface brown while baking.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and port sauce.

The step that matters

Turning the fish once the first side is brown. Turning too early or roughly can tear the flesh and break the stuffing or delicate pieces apart. Wait until the surface is set and browned so the fish holds together when lifted.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, oyster, port wine, ketchup):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Applefits about as well
  3. Grapefits about as well
  4. Red currantfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, oyster, port wine, ketchup. 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.

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 recipesMock Oyster SoupMock Oyster Soup21 recipes