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To Warm Up Salmon

Salmon baked with a sauce of liquor, salad oil, vinegars, capers, anchovy sauce, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Warm Up Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Separate the salmon into flakes and place them in a sauce made of all the ingredients (except the crumbs) to soak for about 2 hours.

  2. Remove the salmon and lay it in a scallop tin.

Bake

  1. Mix the sauce with enough bread-crumbs to achieve a thick consistency.

  2. Cover the fish with the mixture and allow it to brown in the oven at 400°F (200°C).

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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Cucumber + caperstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together303 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Capers + anchovytop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together473 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyraldehyde (malty, chocolate).

  4. Vinegar + cucumbertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Anchovy + breadtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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, providing protein and flaky texture when baked.
Liquor
Soaks into the flakes as part of the marinating sauce, adding moisture and savoury depth.
Salad oil
Carries flavour through the sauce and helps the topping stay moist while it bakes.
Bread-crumbs
Thickened with the sauce to form a topping that sets and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Cover the fish with the mixture and allow it to brown in the oven. The crumb topping needs enough heat to brown, but the salmon can dry out if left too long. Keeping the topping moist and checking the fish as it browns helps both stay tender.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, vinegar, capers, anchovy, sauce, bread):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, vinegar, capers, anchovy, sauce, bread. 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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