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Baked Salmon, Trout or Pickerel

Baked whole fish served with a sweet cream gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Salmon, Trout or Pickerel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean the fish thoroughly and wipe it carefully.

  2. Place the fish in a dripping pan with enough hot water to prevent scorching.

  3. Use a perforated tin sheet, rack, or muffin rings to keep the fish off the bottom of the pan.

  4. If desired, tie the head and tail together to form a circle.

Bake and baste

  1. Bake slowly, basting often with butter and water.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a separate bowl, mix 1 cup of sweet cream with a few spoons of hot water.

  2. Stir in 2 tablespoons of flour and a little chopped parsley.

  3. Heat the mixture in a vessel of boiling water.

  4. Add the gravy from the fish and serve immediately.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Sweet cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and helps the fish brown and stay moist while basting.

The step that matters

Heating the cream and flour mixture. Flour thickens only when heated, and cream can curdle or scorch if overheated. Heating gently in a vessel of boiling water, rather than directly over heat, keeps the sauce smooth and evenly thickened.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, cream, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, cream, flour. 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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