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Crimped Salmon

Crimped Salmon is a fish dish prepared with butter, vegetables, herbs, wine, and sauce tournée.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,108 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Crimped Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce base

  1. In a stewpan, combine butter, carrot, onion, bay leaf, thyme, mace, and cloves. Cook over low heat for 30 minutes.

  2. Add the Madeira wine and let it boil slowly. Strain the liquid, reduce it, and mix in the sauce tournée.

  3. Just before serving, stir in cold butter, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper.

Poach and serve

  1. Boil the salmon in water with mace, sweet herbs, and clove‑stuck onions until just cooked.

  2. Drain the salmon and pour the sauce over it.

  3. For a Catholic family, use the fish boiling liquid thickened with butter and flour instead of sauce tournée.

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. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Carrot + thymetop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Carrot + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Carrot + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together21,601 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Madeira wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the sauce as it boils down and reduces.
Butter
Adds richness and a glossy texture when stirred cold into the finished sauce.
Sauce tournée
Provides a rich, thickened base that gives the sauce body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Stirring in the cold butter just before serving. Whisking cold butter into a warm sauce off the heat emulsifies it and gives a smooth, glossy texture. If the sauce is kept boiling after the butter goes in, it can split and turn greasy.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, carrot, onion, thyme, clove, white wine, sauce):

  1. Marjoramfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, carrot, onion, thyme, clove, white wine, 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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