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Salmon to Collar

A boiled salmon rolled into a collar, seasoned with eggs, herbs, spices, and pickled.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and nutmeg are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,557 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Salmon to Collar

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Cut off some of the tail from the salmon and wash the fish well.

  2. Dry the fish with a clean cloth and rub it with the yolks of eggs.

  3. Make force-meat with the cut-off tail, removing the skin, and mix with chopped herbs, salt, mace, nutmeg, pepper, and grated bread.

  4. Spread the force-meat over the fleshy part of the salmon, adding more pepper and salt.

Roll and boil

  1. Roll the fish into a collar and bind it with broad tape.

  2. Boil the fish in water, salt, vinegar, sweet herbs, sliced ginger, and nutmeg for about 2 hours.

Pickle and store

  1. Transfer the fish to a sousing pan and pour cold pickle over it, letting it stand until used.

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. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Nutmeg + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mace + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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, with its flesh holding the force-meat filling.
Yolks of eggs
Bind the coating and help it set and brown when cooked.
Grated bread
Absorbs moisture and gives the force-meat a softer, lighter texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the cooking liquid and helps firm the flesh.

The step that matters

Boiling the rolled fish. Keeping the water at a gentle simmer cooks the salmon evenly and keeps the flesh moist. A hard boil can break up the fish and force-meat and make the collar dry or ragged.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, egg, nutmeg, pepper, bread, vinegar, ginger):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, egg, nutmeg, pepper, bread, vinegar, ginger. 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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