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Salmon Turbot

A baked casserole of salmon with a butter‑flour‑milk sauce, lemon, eggs, and buttered cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Salmon Turbot

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the salmon

  1. Remove all bones from the salmon and pulverize it.

  2. Sprinkle the salmon with salt and pepper.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the flour.

  2. Add the sweet milk and heat until scalded, then remove from heat to cool.

  3. Once cooled, stir in the beaten eggs and return to the stove to thicken, stirring constantly.

  4. When thick enough, remove from heat and add lemon juice and parsley if desired.

Bake and serve

  1. In a buttered baking dish, layer the salmon and sauce alternately.

  2. Top with buttered cracker crumbs and bake at 350°F (175°C) until golden.

  3. Serve with salted wafers.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Salmon
Provides the main body and flavor of the dish as the bulk filling.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and adds richness and browning to the topping.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk mixture into a smooth base for the sauce.
Eggs
Set when heated, thickening the sauce so it holds together when baked.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy sauce and balances the fish.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs into the sauce. Eggs can scramble if added to hot sauce. Cooling the mixture first and stirring constantly as it returns to the heat lets the eggs thicken it smoothly.

Swap the parsley

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

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

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