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Baked Salmon, Trout or Pickerel

Baked salmon, trout, or pickerel served with a sweet cream sauce and garnished with parsley and nasturtium blooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Salmon, Trout or Pickerel

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the fish thoroughly and wipe it carefully.

  2. Place the fish in a dripping pan with enough water to prevent scorching.

  3. Use a perforated tin sheet or muffin rings to keep the fish elevated.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Bake at 300°F (150°C), basting often with butter and water.

  2. In a separate vessel, heat 1 cup of sweet cream with a few spoonfuls of hot water.

  3. Stir in 2 tablespoons of melted butter and some chopped parsley.

  4. Add the gravy from the fish dish and bring to a boil to thicken.

Serve

  1. Serve the fish on a hot dish and pour the sauce over it.

  2. Garnish with nasturtium blooms and sprigs of parsley.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Salmon + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,401 recipes

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

  3. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Salmon + parsleytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

What each ingredient does

Sweet cream
Forms the body of the sauce and gives it a rich, smooth texture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and helps the fish brown and stay moist while basting.
Salmon
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks.

The step that matters

Bringing the sauce to a boil to thicken. Boiling the cream mixture with the fish gravy lets it reduce and thicken. Boiling too long or too hard can cause the cream to separate or scorch, so watch it closely and stir.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, cream. 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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