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To Broil Fresh Salmon

Broiled salmon slices coated with butter, flour, and salt, served with a sauce of anchovies, leek, capers, pepper, nutmeg, water, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and capers share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

To Broil Fresh Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Melt butter in a pan until smooth.

  2. Coat the salmon slices in the melted butter.

  3. Sprinkle the coated salmon with flour and coarse sea salt.

Broil

  1. Place the coated salmon on a grill and broil over a clear, slow fire.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine butter and flour in a saucepan.

  2. Add washed, boned, and chopped anchovies and leek pieces to the saucepan.

  3. Add chopped capers, pepper, nutmeg, warm water, and vinegar to the saucepan.

  4. Shake the saucepan until well mixed.

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. Leek + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Leek + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Capers + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together211 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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

Salmon
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked by direct heat from the grill.
Butter
Carries the coating and adds richness and moisture to the fish and the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when combined with butter, giving it body.
Anchovies
Add a salty, savoury depth to the sauce.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity to the sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the richness of the butter.

The step that matters

Broiling over a clear, slow fire. Fish is delicate and cooks quickly. Too hot a fire can scorch the coating before the flesh cooks through, while a slow, even heat helps it cook gently and stay moist.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, flour, leek, capers, pepper, 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.

More broiled salmon recipes

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