Skip to main content
Main

Salmon, to Pot

Salmon cooked in a pot with butter, clarified butter, mace, cloves, pepper, bay leaves, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Salmon, to Pot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scale the salmon.

  2. Wipe the salmon, but do not wash it.

  3. Salt the salmon well.

  4. Let it sit until the salt melts and drains off.

  5. Season the salmon with beaten mace, cloves, and whole pepper.

  6. Add a few bay leaves.

Bake and pot

  1. Place the salmon in a pan.

  2. Cover the salmon with butter.

  3. Bake until well done.

  4. Drain the salmon from the gravy.

  5. Place the salmon in pots to keep.

  6. Cover the salmon with clarified 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. 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, cooked through and held whole in the pot.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture as the salmon bakes and coats it for keeping.
Clarified butter
Seals the cooked salmon in the pot, adding fat that helps preserve it.

The step that matters

Let it sit until the salt melts and drains off. Salt draws moisture out of the fish and dissolves into it. Letting it drain before cooking removes excess liquid, which keeps the flesh firmer and seasons it evenly.

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.

You might also like

Salmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesCanned SalmonCanned Salmon14 recipesSmoked SalmonSmoked Salmon14 recipes