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Salmon a LA Gerrlsese

Salmon à la Gerrlsese is a salmon dish simmered in a Madeira wine and stock sauce with shallots, herbs, and anchovy essence.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Salmon a LA Gerrlsese

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the base

  1. Rub the bottom of a stew pan with butter.

  2. Add shallots, herbs, bay leaves, carrots, mace, and seasoning; stir for 10 minutes over medium heat.

  3. Add Madeira wine and simmer gently for 30 minutes.

  4. Strain the mixture over the salmon in the pan.

Cook and finish the sauce

  1. Cook the salmon in this gravy until done.

  2. Add stock, thicken with butter and flour, then stir in anchovies, lemon juice, cayenne, and salt.

  3. Place the salmon on a hot dish, pour some sauce over it, and serve the rest in a separate dish.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Shallot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

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

  5. Shallot + carrottop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together803 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 and is cooked gently in the strained gravy.
Madeira wine
Adds depth and a touch of sweetness to the gravy as it simmers.
White stock
Provides the liquid base of the sauce, which is then thickened.
Butter and flour
Thicken the sauce so it clings to the salmon instead of running thin.
Essence of anchovies
Adds a salty, savoury depth to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Cook the salmon in this gravy until done. Salmon turns dry and firm once overcooked, so it should be checked early and removed as soon as it flakes. Keeping it in the gravy helps it stay moist while it cooks.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, shallot, parsley, carrot, pepper, madeira wine, butter):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, shallot, parsley, carrot, pepper, madeira wine, 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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