Skip to main content
Main

Salmon

A baked salmon dish with eel, mushrooms, bread crumbs, oysters, butter, wine, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Nutmeg and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the force-meat

  1. Mix salmon flesh, eel flesh, and mushrooms to make a force-meat. Season with pepper, salt, nutmeg, and cloves.

  2. Boil the roll crumbs in milk. Beat with 4 eggs until thick. Let cool. Add 4 raw eggs and mix well.

Assemble and bake

  1. Remove skin from salmon slices and place them in a dish. Cover each slice with force-meat.

  2. Pour melted butter over the slices. Sprinkle with bread crumbs. Arrange oysters around the dish.

  3. Bake in the oven until golden brown. Drizzle with melted butter mixed with red wine and lemon juice before serving.

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. Nutmeg + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Mushroom + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the force-meat and set it into a firm, sliceable custard-like mass when baked.
Roll crumbs
Soak up milk and add body, helping the force-meat hold together and stay moist.
Salmon
Provides the main flesh and rich flavor of the dish, covered by the force-meat.
Eel
Adds richness and fat to the force-meat, giving it a softer, more savory texture.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture to the surface and helps the top brown during baking.
Oysters
Add a briny, savory flavor to the dish as an arranged accompaniment.

The step that matters

Adding the raw eggs to the cooled custard. If the milk-egg mixture is still hot when the raw eggs go in, they can partly scramble and make the force-meat grainy. Letting it cool first keeps the mixture smooth and evenly binding.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, mushroom, pepper, nutmeg, milk, egg, butter):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits about as well
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, mushroom, pepper, nutmeg, milk, egg, butter. 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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesSalmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipes