Name: Salmon Oatleta
Ingredients: salmon; butter; onions

Why it works: Butter and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 42,912 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Salmon Oatleta

Ingredients

salmon
butter
onions

Directions

Chop the onions into small pieces and fry them in butter until pale brown.
Add all the ingredients except the salmon and simmer gently until the onions are tender, stirring occasionally.
Cut the salmon into small square pieces, removing all skin and bone.
Add the salmon to the saucepan and heat through without boiling.
Cook for about 1 hour.

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.

Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together42,912 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,481 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Salmon + oniontop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,529 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).