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To Pot Salmon

Salmon baked with butter, mace, cloves, pepper, bay leaves, and clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Pot Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Scale and wipe the salmon, but do not wash it.

  2. Salt the salmon well and let it sit until the salt is melted and drained.

Season and bake

  1. Season with beaten mace, cloves, and whole pepper; add a few bay leaves.

  2. Place the salmon in a pan and cover it with butter.

  3. Bake until well done, then drain the gravy.

Pot and seal

  1. Transfer the salmon to pots and cover with clarified butter when cold.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

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

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, becoming firm and flaky when baked until well done.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the fish and draws out moisture, firming its flesh before cooking.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the fish from drying as it bakes.
Clarified butter
Covers the cooled fish, sealing out air to help it keep.

The step that matters

Draining the gravy after baking. Baking releases juices and fat from the fish. Draining them off before potting keeps the salmon from becoming soggy or greasy, and the remaining fat is what the clarified butter then seals in.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, clove, pepper, butter):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, clove, pepper, 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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