Skip to main content
Sauce

Salmi of Game

A sauce made with butter, flour, stock, catsup, lemon juice, mushrooms, onion extract, and cooked duck.

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

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Salmi of Game

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt and brown the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until browned.

  3. Pour in the stock and stir until it begins to thicken.

  4. Add the cooked duck and mushrooms, stirring gently until heated through.

Finish and serve

  1. When ready to serve, add the catsup, onion extract, and lemon juice.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  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

Butter
Browns and adds a rich, nutty flavour to the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the fat.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens with the flour.
Cooked duck
Supplies the meat and savoury flavour that the sauce is built around.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender, meaty texture to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the browned butter and then the stock. Flour must cook in the fat long enough to lose its raw taste, and the stock must be added gradually while stirring so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, lemon, mushroom, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, lemon, mushroom, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Hot Lemon Cream SauceHot Lemon Cream Sauce11 recipesWine Sauce (for stewed fruit)Wine Sauce (for stewed fruit)186 recipesCaper SauceCaper Sauce180 recipesBrown SauceBrown Sauce141 recipes