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To Warm Up Salmon

Salmon baked with a sauce of liquor, oil, vinegars, capers, anchovy sauce, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Warm Up Salmon

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 salmon

  1. Separate the salmon into flakes.

  2. Mix the liquor, salad oil, chili vinegar, cucumber vinegar, minced capers, and anchovy sauce in a bowl.

  3. Soak the salmon flakes in the sauce for about 2 hours.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the soaked salmon in a scallop tin.

  2. Mix the remaining sauce with enough bread crumbs to achieve a thick consistency.

  3. Cover the salmon with the bread crumb mixture.

  4. Heat in the oven at 350°F (175°C) until hot.

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Cucumber + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Capers + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Vinegar + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Forms the body of the dish and becomes tender and flaky when heated.
Bread crumbs
Form a thick topping that soaks up sauce and helps the surface brown when baked.
Salad oil
Adds fat that carries flavour and keeps the salmon moist during baking.
Anchovy sauce
Adds savoury depth and salt to the marinade.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny bite that brightens the rich fish.

The step that matters

Soaking the salmon flakes. Soaking lets the sauce's salt and acid penetrate the flakes, seasoning them evenly. Leaving them too long can make the fish mushy and overly salty, while too short leaves the flavour uneven.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, vinegar, capers, anchovy, sauce, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, vinegar, capers, anchovy, sauce, bread. 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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