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Salmon and Caper Sauce

Salmon baked with butter, parsley, shallot, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and topped with caper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Salmon and Caper Sauce

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. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Lay salmon in a baking dish.

  3. Place pieces of butter over the salmon.

  4. Add chopped parsley, minced shallot, salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

  5. Rub some seasoning into the fish.

Bake and serve

  1. Baste the salmon frequently while it cooks.

  2. Once done, remove the salmon and let it drain for a minute or two.

  3. Transfer the salmon to a serving dish.

  4. Pour caper sauce over the salmon.

  5. Serve.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Shallot + nutmegtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  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, cooking to a flaky, tender texture.
Butter
Adds fat and moisture, carrying flavour and keeping the fish from drying out.
Shallot
Adds a mild, sweet onion-like aroma that mellows as it cooks.
Caper sauce
Adds a sharp, acidic, salty note that contrasts with the rich fish and butter.

The step that matters

Basting the salmon frequently while it cooks. Basting spreads melted butter over the surface, adding moisture and fat so the fish stays tender instead of drying out in the oven's dry heat.

Swap the nutmeg

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, parsley, shallot, pepper, sauce. 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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