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Salmon Cutlets with Caper Sauce

Salmon cutlets served with a caper sauce made from stock, butter, flour, and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Salmon Cutlets with Caper Sauce

Ingredients

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. Remove the bones and skin from the salmon slice and cut it into ½ inch thick slices.

  2. Flatten the slices with a rolling pin dipped in water and cut them into uniform cutlets.

  3. Place the cutlets flat on a well-buttered baking tin and sprinkle with pepper and salt.

Bake the cutlets

  1. Cover with buttered white paper and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes.

Make the caper sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine salmon trimmings, carrots, onions, thyme, parsley, bay leaf, cloves, whole pepper, and stock.

  2. Boil gently until reduced by half, then strain the liquid into a basin and remove any fat.

  3. Melt the walnut-sized butter in a pan, add the flour, and stir until well colored.

  4. Add the strained liquid to the butter mixture, stirring until the sauce boils.

  5. Stir in the capers and pour the sauce over the cutlets before serving.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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, cooking to a flaky, tender texture when baked.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat and flavor, and helps the flour brown for a richer color.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter to form a roux.
Stock
Provides the liquid base of the sauce, gaining body as it reduces.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the flour into the butter until well colored. Cooking the flour in butter forms a roux; cooking it long enough builds color and nutty flavor, while stopping too early leaves a raw, pasty taste. Adding the liquid must follow with steady stirring so the sauce thickens smoothly without lumps.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, pepper, butter, carrot, thyme, parsley, clove. 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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