Name: Salmon Slice a Royale
Ingredients: Salmon; Chablis (or white wine); Forcemeat for fish; Small mushrooms; Truffles; Potatoes

Why it works: Mushroom and truffle are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,900 recipes. Both carry 2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Salmon Slice a Royale

Ingredients

Directions

Braise the salmon in Chablis until cooked through.
Garnish with small quenelles of forcemeat, small mushrooms, slices of truffles, and little balls of potato.
Use a large round spoon cutter to shape the potato balls and cook them by boiling.
Serve with Normande sauce on the side.

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.

Mushroom + truffletop 4% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,900 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,765 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).
Mushroom + potatotop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together968 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Salmon + fishtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,078 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Fish + mushroomtop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together444 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, white wine, fish, mushroom, truffle):

Asparagusfits better
Shallotfits better
Tomatofits about as well
Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, white wine, fish, mushroom, truffle. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.