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To Pot Salmon

A dish of salmon ground with spices and butter, then packed into pots and topped with clarified butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and white pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,695 recipes. Both carry myrcene, which smells balsamic, herbaceous. The science ↓

To Pot Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Remove the meat from the skin and bones of the cold salmon.

  2. Pound the salmon in a mortar with cayenne, pounded mace, white pepper, and salt.

Pot and seal

  1. Add the warmed butter and pound until very fine.

  2. Transfer the mixture to potting pots.

  3. Pour clarified butter over 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. Mace + white peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,695 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  2. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  4. Pepper + white peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: piperonal (bitter, coconut).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Salmon
Forms the main body of the potted mixture, providing its flavor and texture.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, spreadable texture when pounded into the fish.
Clarified butter
Forms a sealed topping that protects the salmon from air and drying out.

The step that matters

Pounding until very fine. Pounding breaks the fish fibers and fully blends in the butter, giving a smooth, spreadable texture. Stopping early leaves a coarse, grainy result.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Clovefits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, pepper, mace. 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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