Why it works: Olive and salmon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,942 recipes. Both carry trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓
Shell Fish
Ingredients
Directions
Cook the salmon
Heat the olive oil in a pan over a clear fire until it stops bubbling.
Add the salmon to the pan.
Fry gently until cooked through, lightly browning the surface.
Lift the pan from the fire to prevent further browning once the proper color is achieved.
Finish and serve
Drain the fish well.
Let it cool completely.
Dish the fish.
Garnish with light foliage.
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.
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Olive + salmontop 15% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together2,942 recipes
Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).
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, cooking through to a flaky texture.
- Olive oil
- Conducts heat to the fish and adds fat for gentle browning and flavour.
The step that matters
Lift the pan from the fire once the proper color is achieved. Salmon keeps cooking from residual heat in the pan, so removing it at the right colour prevents the surface from over-browning and the flesh from drying out.
“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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