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Baked Salmon

A baked salmon served with a butter and water gravy, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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 cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wipe the fish with a damp cloth, but do not soak it in water.

  2. Rub the fish with salad oil and sprinkle with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Place the fish in a baking pan.

Bake and baste

  1. Pour the boiling water mixed with melted butter over the fish.

  2. Bake covered, basting every 15 minutes.

  3. Transfer the fish to a hot platter and keep it warm in the oven.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Thicken the gravy left in the pan with cornstarch mixed with cold water.

  2. Season the gravy with lemon juice and a dash of onion juice.

  3. Bring the gravy to a boil.

  4. Pour the gravy into a gravy boat.

  5. Serve the salmon garnished with sprigs of parsley.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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, cooked gently until it flakes.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the basting liquid and gravy.
Cornstarch
Thickens the pan liquid into a smooth gravy as it heats.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and balances the rich fish.

The step that matters

Basting the fish every 15 minutes. Regular basting with the liquid in the pan keeps the surface moist, so the fish does not dry out while it cooks through gently under cover.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, pepper, butter, lemon, onion, ketchup, parsley):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, pepper, butter, lemon, onion, ketchup, parsley. 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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