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Fresh Salmon

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

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 ↓

Fresh Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Cut slices from fresh salmon and wipe them clean and dry.

  2. Melt butter with a little flour and coarse sea salt, then coat the salmon pieces in the butter mixture.

Broil the salmon

  1. Place the salmon on a clean grill and broil over a clear, slow fire, turning it to cook evenly until done.

Make the anchovy-leek sauce

  1. For the sauce, wash, bone, and chop the anchovies and cut the leek into long pieces.

  2. In a saucepan, melt some butter, add flour, anchovies, leek, capers, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

  3. Add warm water and vinegar, then bring to a boil and simmer until ready.

Serve

  1. Remove the leek from the sauce, pour the sauce into a dish, and place the broiled salmon on top.

  2. Garnish with lemon quarters.

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
Forms the main protein that cooks through under broiling and flakes when done.
Butter
Coats the salmon and enriches the sauce, adding fat, flavour and a rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the butter and the sauce so they cling and turn smooth instead of thin.
Anchovies
Melt into the sauce, adding savory depth and salty umami flavour.
Leek
Softens while simmering, adding a mild onion-like sweetness to the sauce.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the rich butter sauce.

The step that matters

Turn the salmon to cook evenly until done. Over a slow fire the thin pieces can dry out on one side before the other cooks. Turning them evenly keeps the flesh moist and cooked through without overcooking the edges.

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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