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To Fry Salmon

This dish is salmon fillets fried in paper, seasoned with salt, cayenne, black pepper, served with melted butter and anchovy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Fry Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the salmon into slices about 1 inch thick.

  2. Season the slices with coarse sea salt, cayenne pepper, and black pepper.

  3. Wrap each slice in white paper.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the wrapped salmon until cooked through.

  2. Serve with plain melted butter and anchovy 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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Salmon + anchovytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together535 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

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 fillets
Forms the main body of the dish, firming and turning opaque as it cooks through.
Plain melted butter
Adds richness and moisture to the fish when served over it.
Anchovy sauce
Adds salty, savoury depth to the finished fish.

The step that matters

Frying until cooked through. Salmon dries out quickly once it passes its ideal point, so checking that the flesh is opaque and flakes easily keeps it moist better than relying on a fixed time.

“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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