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Entree of Fresh Salmon and Capers

A dish of thin salmon slices coated in herb and egg mixture, breaded, fried, and served with cullis sauce and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme 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 ↓

Entree of Fresh Salmon and Capers

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare 4 thin slices of fresh salmon.

  2. Mix parsley, thyme, basil, shallots, sweet oil, egg yolks, Cayenne pepper, and salt in a bowl.

  3. Dip each slice of salmon into the mixture, then coat with fine breadcrumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat lard in a pan until boiling.

  2. Fry the salmon slices until golden brown.

  3. Drain excess oil and serve with cullis sauce and chopped capers.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  4. Thyme + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,476 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Parsley + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,351 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

Egg yolks
Bind the herb mixture so it clings to the salmon and breadcrumbs.
Fine breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that protects the salmon while it fries.
Salmon
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks.
Sweet oil
Adds fat to the herb mixture, carrying flavour and helping moisture stay in the fish.

The step that matters

Fry the salmon slices until golden brown. Breadcrumbs brown quickly in hot fat, so the lard must be hot enough to crisp the coating without burning it. Frying too long or too hot can overcook the thin salmon and dry it out before the centre is done.

Swap the basil

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, parsley, thyme, shallot, egg, pepper, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Basilthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, parsley, thyme, shallot, egg, pepper, sauce. 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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