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Salmon Cutlets

Salmon cutlets coated in flour, egg, and breadcrumbs, then fried and served with tartar sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Salmon Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Remove the skin and bone from the salmon slices and trim them into cutlet shapes.

  2. Sprinkle pepper, coarse sea salt, and flour on the cutlets.

Coat the cutlets

  1. Dip the cutlets into the beaten eggs mixed with chopped parsley or onion.

  2. Coat the cutlets with bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the cutlets in boiling lard.

  2. Sauté the cutlets in butter in a sauté pan.

  3. Arrange the cutlets in a circle.

  4. Pour tartar sauce in the center.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Salmon
Forms the main body of the cutlets and provides the flaky texture and flavour.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the egg and crumb layers adhere to the salmon.
Eggs
Bind the coating so the bread crumbs stick to the cutlets.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden outer crust when fried.
Lard or butter
Fat for frying that conducts heat and browns the crumb coating.

The step that matters

Coating the cutlets in order. Flour, then egg, then crumbs must each cling before frying. If the surface is wet or the flour is skipped, the crumbs can fall off or steam instead of browning, leaving the crust uneven and the fish exposed.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, pepper, flour, egg, bread, butter):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Turmericfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, pepper, flour, egg, bread, butter. 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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