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Grenadins De Saumon a LA Rouennaise

A Rouen-style salmon dish with mussels, fish quenelles, and crayfish, served with a white wine and cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 21 ingredients
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Why it works: White wine and red wine share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and 96 recipes mention both. Both carry beta-damascenone, which smells apple, rose. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, fish, shellfish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the salmon

  1. Split the salmon down the center, remove the skin and bone, and cut into 8 nice lengthwise slices.

  2. Flatten the slices slightly and lard one side with strips of gherkin or fat bacon.

Cook the salmon

  1. Place the salmon in a buttered sauté pan, season with salt and pepper, add the white wine and a little mussel liquor, cover with buttered paper, and cook in a 400°F (200°C) oven until done.

Make the sauce

  1. In a separate pot, combine the fish bones, skin, parings, salt, pepper, grated nutmeg, sliced onion, parsley, bay leaf, thyme, red wine, and ½ pint of water. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.

  2. In another pan, cook 1 ounce of flour in 1 ounce of butter, then stir in the strained fish stock and let it boil for a few minutes to cook the flour thoroughly.

  3. Add the egg yolks and lemon juice, stir over heat to bind the eggs, and strain through a tammy.

  4. Finish with 1 tablespoon of cream.

Prepare the mussels

  1. Clean the mussels and place them in a pan with ½ ounce of butter and a sprig of parsley.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. White wine + red winetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together96 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Red wine + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together749 recipes

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

  4. White wine + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,495 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Salmon + fishtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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 gently in wine and butter until tender.
Egg yolks
Bind and thicken the sauce as their proteins set with gentle heat.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked in butter to form a roux before the stock is added.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the salmon, the roux and the mussels.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the salmon as it cooks in the pan.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Binding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated because their proteins set. If the sauce gets too hot or is stirred too vigorously, the yolks can scramble and curdle, so stir over gentle heat only until lightly thickened.

Flavor stand-ins for the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, fish, crayfish, white wine, red wine, parsley, thyme):

  1. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  2. Shallotbetter flavor fit
  3. Potatobetter flavor fit
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, fish, crayfish, white wine, red wine, parsley, thyme. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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