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Salmon Baked with Pike Sauce

A salmon fillet coated with bread crumbs, herbs, and butter, baked until golden and served with pike sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Salmon Baked with Pike Sauce

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the salmon

  1. Truss the salmon with kitchen twine as directed for boiling.

  2. In a bowl, mix the bread crumbs, salt, pepper, chopped herbs, butter, and 2 eggs.

  3. Stuff the mixture inside the salmon and skewer it closed.

Coat and bake

  1. Beat the remaining egg with salt and pepper.

  2. Brush the beaten egg over the salmon.

  3. Sprinkle bread crumbs over the salmon.

  4. Drizzle clarified butter over the salmon.

  5. Add more bread crumbs over the salmon.

  6. Bake in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Remove the skewer and twine, and serve with pike sauce underneath.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Salmon + eggtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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 and is cooked through by baking inside the crumb coating.
Eggs
Bind the bread crumb stuffing and, when brushed on, help the crust set and brown.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and form a crisp, golden crust around the fish.
Clarified butter
Adds richness and helps the crumb coating brown evenly in the oven.

The step that matters

Bake until golden brown in a hot oven. Salmon cooks quickly and dries out if overbaked, while the crumb crust needs enough heat to brown. Watching for color and doneness together keeps the fish moist and the crust golden.

“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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