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Baked Salmon Steaks

A simple baked salmon steak seasoned with salt, pepper, lemon, butter, and served with optional sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Salmon Steaks

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare and bake

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the salmon steaks on a buttered baking tin.

  3. Season the steaks with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  4. Cover with greased paper and bake for 10 minutes.

Serve

  1. Garnish to taste and serve with caper sauce or rich brown sauce flavored with Worcestershire sauce.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Salmon + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Salmon steaks
Provide the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the fish stay moist and carry flavor.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor and balances the richness of the fish.

The step that matters

Baking for 10 minutes under cover. Salmon cooks quickly and dries out easily. Covering it traps steam and keeps it moist, but overbaking toughens the flesh, so check that it flakes easily before removing it from the oven.

“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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