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Salmon Baked in Slices

Salmon baked in slices with a sauce of butter, water, port wine, ketchup, and anchovies.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Salmon Baked in Slices

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 sauce

  1. Melt the butter in the water over low heat.

  2. Mix in the port wine, ketchup, and anchovies.

  3. Let the anchovies dissolve in the mixture, then strain it.

Assemble and bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Season the salmon slices with cayenne and salt.

  3. Pour the sauce over the salmon slices.

  4. Cover the dish with buttered paper and bake in the oven.

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. Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,499 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Port wine + ketchuptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together425 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, 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
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into flaky, tender slices as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and its flour coating helps thicken the sauce slightly.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour, with some acidity, to the sauce.
Anchovies
Dissolve into the sauce to add savoury, salty depth without a fishy taste.
Ketchup
Contributes sweetness, acidity and tomato flavour to the sauce.

The step that matters

Cover the dish with buttered paper and bake. Covering traps steam around the salmon so it cooks gently and stays moist, while the sauce reduces and flavours the fish. Uncovered, the surface can dry out.

“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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