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Tartelettes De Saumon a I’Ecossaise

A pastry tartlet filled with salmon, vegetables, herbs, and a mayonnaise‑aspic coating.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,973 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Tartelettes De Saumon a I’Ecossaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crust

  1. Prepare the short crust with flour, butter, and water.

  2. Line 8 to 10 tartlet molds with the crust, prick the bottoms, fill with lentils or dried peas, and bake until golden.

  3. Remove lentils or peas and let the crusts cool.

Poach the salmon

  1. In a buttered sauté pan, place the salmon, carrot, onion, and herbs.

  2. Add salt, water, and wine to cover the fish.

  3. Add lemon juice and cook over gentle heat for about 10 minutes.

  4. Once cool, cut out rounds of salmon slightly smaller than the tartlet crusts.

  5. Coat each round with a mixture of mayonnaise and aspic.

  6. Garnish one side of each round with truffles, chilies, or gherkins.

Assemble and serve

  1. Mix remaining salmon with potato, celery, egg white, and beetroot, finely minced.

  2. Season with cayenne, salt, tarragon, and chervil, adding enough mayonnaise to moisten.

  3. Fill the tartlet crusts with the salmon mixture.

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. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  5. Thyme + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,586 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the structure of the short crust that holds the filling.
Butter
Adds richness and tenderness to the crust and enriches the sauté pan.
Salmon
Provides the main flavour and the body of both the rounds and the filling.
Mayonnaise
Moistens the salmon mixture and adds richness to the filling.
Aspic jelly
Sets into a glossy coating that seals the salmon rounds.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the poaching liquid.

The step that matters

Poaching the salmon over gentle heat. Gentle heat keeps the fish tender and moist; boiling toughens the proteins and makes the flesh dry and firm.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, carrot, thyme, butter, lemon, egg, potato):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, carrot, thyme, butter, lemon, egg, potato. 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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