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Salmon a LA Braise

A braised salmon stuffed with a mixture of eel, anchovies, herbs, and spices, served in a sauce of butter, flour, fish broth, and Madeira.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 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 a LA Braise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Slit the eel open, remove the bone, and chop the meat finely with anchovies, lemon peel, pepper, nutmeg, parsley, thyme, and hard‑boiled egg yolk.

  2. Mix the ingredients and roll them in a piece of butter.

  3. Stuff the forcemeat into the belly of the salmon and sew it up.

Make the sauce and stew

  1. In a large stew‑pan, melt the butter, then stir in the flour until slightly brown.

  2. Add fish broth and Madeira.

  3. Season with pepper, salt, mace, and cloves.

  4. Add the onion and sweet herbs.

  5. Place the fish in the stew‑pan.

  6. Cover tightly.

  7. Let it stew.

  8. When the fish is almost done, add mushrooms, truffles, or morels.

  9. Continue to stew until fully cooked.

Serve

  1. Carefully remove the salmon.

  2. Place it on a dish.

  3. Pour the sauce over it.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Eel
Adds rich, savory flavor and a tender texture to the stuffing.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and smooth mouthfeel to the stuffing.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as it cooks with the butter and broth.
Madeira
Adds sweetness and depth of flavor to the sauce.
Egg yolk
Binds the chopped stuffing so it holds together when rolled and stuffed.
Anchovies
Adds salty, savory depth that enhances the overall flavor of the stuffing.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour into the butter until slightly brown. Cooking flour in melted butter forms a roux; cooking it until slightly brown deepens flavor, while stopping too early leaves a raw starchy taste and cooking too long weakens its thickening power.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, pepper, parsley, thyme, egg, salmon, butter):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, pepper, parsley, thyme, egg, salmon, butter. 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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