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Pickled Salmon

Pickled salmon soaked in salt, boiled, and served with a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pickled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Soak the salt salmon for 24 hours.

  2. Pour boiling water over the salmon to cook, changing the water while cooking.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the flour and 2 tablespoons of boiling water to the melted butter, stirring to combine.

  3. Season with pepper and pour the sauce over the salmon when ready to serve.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

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

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Salmon + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Salt salmon
Main ingredient; soaking draws out the salt so the fish tastes milder.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and carries its flavour.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells in the hot liquid.

The step that matters

Adding the flour and water to the melted butter. Stirring as the flour goes in keeps it evenly dispersed, so it hydrates and thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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