Name: Salmon Steaks
Ingredients: salmon; flour; butter; string or pins; fried parsley; anchovy or lobster sauce; prawn or lobster sauce

Why it works: Anchovy and lobster work together. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 470 recipes. Both carry octanal, which smells fat, soap. The science ↓

Salmon Steaks

Ingredients

Directions

Split the salmon and remove the bone carefully.
Cut the salmon into fillets or steaks, about 1 inch thick.
Dry the fillets lightly with a cloth and dredge them with flour.
Prepare a clean grill and rub the bars with chalk to prevent sticking.
Broil the salmon over bright coals, turning with steak tongs until thoroughly cooked.
Serve hot, wrapped in a heated napkin, with anchovy or lobster sauce.
Alternatively, butter pieces of white paper, wrap salmon in them, and secure with string or pins.
Broil the wrapped salmon over a moderate fire until done, then remove the paper.
Serve hot, garnished with fried parsley, with prawn or lobster sauce.

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.

Anchovy + lobstertop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together470 recipes

Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).
Salmon + anchovytop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together535 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together124,287 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together16,675 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together3,697 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, flour, butter, anchovy, lobster):

Capersfits better
Parsleythe original
Nutmegfits about as well
Tarragonfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, flour, butter, anchovy, lobster. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.