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Dressed Salmon

A baked salmon served with a carrot, turnip, celery, onion, herb, and mace butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Dressed Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the marinade

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the salmon in a fish kettle or large baking dish.

  3. For the marinade, combine chopped carrot, turnip, celery, onion, herbs, and mace in a saucepan with butter.

  4. Cook the mixture and pour it over the salmon.

  5. Cover the salmon with butter paper and baste it frequently with the marinade.

Cook and make the sauce

  1. Cook the salmon in the oven or on a hot plate, turning carefully.

  2. Once cooked, remove the salmon and drain excess grease.

  3. Prepare a sauce by combining brown sauce, a few drops of anchovy sauce, lemon juice, sugar, and wine in the pan.

  4. Boil the sauce for a few minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve the salmon with the sauce poured over it or glaze it.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  3. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

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, cooking through gently to a flaky texture.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping the fish stay tender while basting.
Brown sauce
Provides a savoury, deeply flavoured base for the finished sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its fat.
Wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce as it reduces.
Sugar
Adds a touch of sweetness that rounds out the acidity and savoury flavours.

The step that matters

Turning the salmon carefully. Salmon flakes apart when handled roughly, and its delicate proteins set quickly with heat. Turning gently keeps the pieces intact and cooks them evenly, so the fish stays moist rather than dry or broken.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, carrot, turnip, celery, parsley, thyme. 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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