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Salmon Au Bleu

A salmon dish simmered in port wine with carrots, onions, cloves, bay leaves, parsley, thyme, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Salmon Au Bleu

Ingredients

Directions

Poach

  1. Place the salmon slices in a fish kettle.

  2. Add port wine, sliced carrots, sliced onions, cloves, bay leaves, parsley, thyme, salt, and pepper.

  3. Cover and boil gently until the flesh easily separates from the bone.

Serve

  1. Remove the skin and serve with a butter sauce mixed with capers, sliced gherkins, and a little anchovy butter.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Clove + thymetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Salmon slices
Forms the main flesh that turns tender and flakes as it cooks gently in liquid.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and depth to the poaching liquid, flavouring the fish as it cooks.
Onions
Release sweetness and aroma into the poaching liquid as they soften.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and aroma to the poaching liquid.

The step that matters

Boil gently until the flesh easily separates from the bone. Salmon becomes dry and tough when the liquid boils hard. A gentle simmer cooks the flesh evenly so it stays moist and flakes cleanly away from the bone.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, port wine, carrot, clove, parsley, thyme, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, port wine, carrot, clove, parsley, thyme, pepper. 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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