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Mayonnaise of Salmon

Salmon fillets cooked in butter, served with the cooking butter and optional gherkin garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Mayonnaise of Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare the salmon by filleting it, ensuring to keep the flesh in one piece.

Cook

  1. Melt 1 ounce of butter in a stewpan.

  2. Place the salmon fillets skin side down in the butter.

  3. Season the upper side with salt and pepper.

  4. Cover the pan and cook over very low heat for 10 minutes.

  5. Carefully turn the fillets and cook until done.

Serve

  1. Serve with the cooking butter poured over the salmon and garnish with gherkins if desired.

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 + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Salmon + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  5. Salmon + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Provides the main body of the dish, cooking gently to keep the flesh moist and tender.
Butter
Cooks the fish gently and adds richness and moisture to the flesh.

The step that matters

Cover the pan and cook over very low heat for 10 minutes. Low, covered heat cooks the salmon gently, so the proteins set without tightening and drying out. Too much heat toughens the flesh and can scorch the butter before the fish is done.

“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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