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To Bake Salmon

A salmon baked with wine or stock, cream, mace, pepper, salt, sweet herbs, butter, and rice flour, optionally with seafood.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Bake Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the salmon as for roasting.

  2. Place it in a baking dish with wine or stock, ensuring it doesn't touch the larding.

  3. Baste with the braise if lard is used.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake until done, covered with cream seasoned with mace, pepper, salt, and sweet herbs.

  2. Pour off the sauce, thicken it with butter and rice flour, and add optional seafood.

  3. Serve the salmon with the sauce poured over it.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Pepper + ricetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Wine + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Salmon + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 and is cooked gently by baking under a covering.
Cream
Adds richness and moisture, and forms the sauce that coats the fish as it bakes.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the sauce and carries the thickened texture.
Rice flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the fish rather than running off.
Wine or stock
Provides liquid in the baking dish, keeping the fish moist and flavouring the braise.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, wine, cream, pepper, butter, rice, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Turmericfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, wine, cream, pepper, butter, rice, flour. 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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