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Drefs a Jowl of Pickled Salmon

A pickled salmon jowl simmered with spices, vinegar, white wine, and butter sauce, served warm.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Drefs a Jowl of Pickled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the pickled salmon in fresh water overnight.

  2. Place it in a large stew pan and season with whole pepper, mace in a muslin rag, onion, bruised nutmeg, sweet herbs, parsley, and lemon peel.

  3. Add vinegar, white wine, and butter rolled in flour.

Cook and finish

  1. Cover and simmer over low heat for 15 minutes.

  2. Carefully remove the salmon and place it on a dish.

  3. Keep it warm over hot water.

  4. Boil the sauce until thick, then remove the spices, onion, and herbs.

  5. Pour the sauce over the salmon and garnish with lemon.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Nutmeg + parsleytop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Mace + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,557 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Pickled salmon jowl
Is the main protein, softened by soaking to reduce its saltiness before cooking.
Butter
Rolled in flour, it enriches the sauce and helps thicken it while adding richness.
White wine
Adds acidity and flavour to the sauce as it simmers and reduces.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the richness of the butter and the salmon.

The step that matters

Boil the sauce until thick. The sauce must reduce enough to thicken, since the flour-coated butter and wine only form a cohesive sauce when boiled down. Undercooked sauce stays thin and watery, while overboiling can make it too sharp or tight.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, pepper, onion, nutmeg, parsley, lemon, vinegar):

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, pepper, onion, nutmeg, parsley, lemon, vinegar. 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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