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Frejh Salmon

Broiled salmon fillets served with a sauce of anchovies, leek, capers, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and capers share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Frejh Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut fresh salmon into fillets and wipe them clean and dry.

  2. Melt butter in a pan, add a little flour and coarse sea salt.

  3. Coat the salmon fillets in the butter mixture.

Make the sauce

  1. Wash and bone the anchovies, then chop them into small pieces.

  2. Cut the leek into three or four long pieces and add to a saucepan with butter and flour.

  3. Add the anchovies, leek, capers, pepper, nutmeg, warm water, and vinegar to the saucepan.

  4. Shake the saucepan until it boils, then simmer until ready.

  5. Remove the leek from the sauce.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the salmon on a clean grill and broil over a low fire.

  2. Turn the salmon to cook evenly on both sides.

  3. Pour the sauce into a dish.

  4. Place the broiled salmon on top.

  5. Garnish with lemon wedges.

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. Leek + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Leek + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Capers + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together211 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  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 fillets
Forms the main protein, which firms and flakes as it cooks under the broiler.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and helps the salmon brown and stay moist.
Flour
Thickens the butter and the sauce so they cling together rather than running off.
Anchovies
Adds deep savoury flavour that melts into the sauce.
Capers
Add sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the richness of the butter.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its fat.

The step that matters

Shake the saucepan until it boils, then simmer until ready. Flour thickens only when it is heated with liquid and kept moving, so stirring or shaking prevents lumps. Simmering gently keeps the sauce smooth without scorching the butter.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, flour, leek, capers, pepper, vinegar):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, flour, leek, capers, pepper, vinegar. 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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