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To Pot Salmon

Salmon baked in butter with spices and bay leaves.

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

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

  1. Scale and wipe the salmon, but do not wash it.

  2. Salt the salmon well.

  3. Let the salmon sit until the salt melts and drains off.

  4. Season the salmon with ground mace, ground cloves, and whole pepper.

Bake

  1. Lay a few bay leaves on the pan.

  2. Place the salmon in the pan.

  3. Cover the salmon with butter.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until well done.

  5. Drain the salmon from the gravy.

Store

  1. Place the salmon in pots to keep.

  2. Once cold, cover the salmon with clarified butter.

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

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

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

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

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 and is preserved.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, helping protect the fish from drying out during baking.
Clarified butter
Forms a fat layer over the cooled fish, adding richness and helping it keep its moisture.
Ground mace
Contributes a warm, aromatic spice flavour that penetrates the fish.
Ground cloves
Adds a strong, warm aroma and pungent spice flavour.

The step that matters

Bake at 350°F (175°C) until well done. Salmon is lean and its proteins tighten as they cook, so going past doneness squeezes out moisture and leaves the flesh dry and tough. Checking for doneness early helps keep it moist.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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

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