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To Pot Salmon

A method of preserving salmon by seasoning, baking, and storing in clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Pot Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Rub the salmon with coarse sea salt and let it sit for 1 hour to drain moisture.

  2. Season the salmon with pounded mace, cloves, black pepper, and Jamaica pepper.

  3. Cut the salmon into neat pieces.

Bake and pot

  1. Place the salmon pieces in a pan.

  2. Cover the pieces with melted butter.

  3. Bake until cooked through.

  4. Drain the salmon from the fat.

  5. Place the salmon into potting cans.

  6. Cover the salmon with cooled clarified butter.

  7. Add vinegar for extra flavor if desired.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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, becoming firm and flaky as it cooks.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out surface moisture and seasons the flesh before cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the fish so it stays tender during baking.
Mace
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the fish.
Cloves
Contributes strong, warm aroma and spice flavour.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. Salmon turns from translucent to opaque and flakes when its proteins set at the right temperature. Overbaking dries the flesh, while underbaking leaves it unsafe to eat, so check the thickest piece.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, clove, pepper, butter, vinegar. 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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