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Grilled Salmon

Grilled salmon slices seasoned with oil, pepper, and coarse sea salt, served with optional sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Grilled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Rub the salmon slices with salad oil and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  2. Place the salmon on a grill over a clear fire.

Grill and serve

  1. Turn the salmon every five minutes and baste occasionally with oil or butter.

  2. Serve with your choice of Italian sauce, mayonnaise, or other sauce.

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 + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Salmon + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Salmon + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Is the main protein that cooks through on the grill and forms the dish's texture.
Salad oil
Coats the surface to help prevent sticking and adds moisture during grilling.
Butter
Adds richness and browning when used to baste the salmon.

The step that matters

Turn the salmon every five minutes. Turning at regular intervals lets both sides cook evenly over the fire, so the outside does not char before the centre is cooked through.

“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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