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Salmon Steak in Batter

A battered salmon steak fried until golden, served with cucumber and lettuce hearts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Salmon Steak in Batter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Sprinkle salmon steaks lightly with coarse sea salt and let sit.

  2. In a bowl, mix eggs, cream, lemon juice, herbs, lemon peel, flour, port, cayenne, mace, and sugar until well combined.

  3. Roll each steak in flour to dry.

  4. Dip each steak in the batter to coat thoroughly.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat olive oil in a frying pan until boiling.

  2. Fry the steaks until golden brown on both sides.

  3. Serve hot with cucumber and lettuce hearts.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Salmon + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  5. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and set into a coating as the steaks fry.
Flour
Dries the salmon surface so the batter clings, and thickens the batter.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the batter, keeping the coating tender.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich batter and fish.

The step that matters

Rolling in flour before dipping. A dry surface lets the batter cling evenly. Damp salmon causes the batter to slide off or cook unevenly. Frying in hot oil sets the egg batter quickly, forming a golden crust while keeping the fish moist inside.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, egg, cream, lemon, flour, pepper, sugar):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, egg, cream, lemon, flour, pepper, sugar. 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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