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Salmon Cutlets

Salmon cutlets fried and served with a curry-floured sauce and mixed pickles.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,081 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Salmon Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cutlets

  1. Cut the salmon into rounds ¼ inch thick and 3 inches across.

  2. Dip each round in a mixture of flour and curry powder.

  3. Fry the cutlets in hot fat until lightly browned, preferably in a frying basket.

  4. If using a frying pan, melt a slice of butter.

  5. Turn the cutlets halfway through cooking.

Make the curry sauce

  1. Finely mince half a shallot and fry it in a little butter.

  2. Sprinkle 2 teaspoons of flour and 2 teaspoons of curry powder into the pan.

  3. Add ½ pint of stock and stir the sauce until it thickens.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of finely chopped mixed pickles.

Serve

  1. Arrange the cutlets on a dish.

  2. Pour the sauce over the cutlets.

  3. Serve.

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. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Butter + shallottop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,426 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Salmon + shallottop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together352 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 cutlets and carries the flavour of the dish.
Flour
Coats the salmon and thickens the sauce, giving body and a light browned crust.
Curry powder
Adds the spiced aroma and flavour to both the coating and the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness for frying and gives flavour to the shallot.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it cooks.

The step that matters

Turn the cutlets halfway through cooking. Salmon cooks from the edges inward, so turning once helps the cutlets brown evenly and cook through without drying out the outer layer.

Swap the shallot

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotthe original
  3. Leekfits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, flour, 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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