Name: Salmon, Baked
Ingredients: 1 small salmon or a portion of a large salmon; forcemeat; butter; oysters (optional); 2 tablespoons port wine; 1 tablespoon ketchup; juice of 1 lemon

Why it works: Salmon and oyster work together. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 672 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

Salmon, Baked

Ingredients

Directions

If using a small fish, turn the tail to the mouth and skewer it. If using a large fish, cut it into slices.
Fill the belly with forcemeat, egg the fish, and dip it in the forcemeat.
Place bits of butter around the salmon. Optionally, add oysters.
Baste the fish occasionally with butter.
When one side is brown, carefully turn it over. When the second side is brown, it is done.
Remove the fish from the baking dish with all the juices.
For sauce, mix melted butter with port wine, ketchup, and lemon juice, and pour over the fish.

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.

Salmon + oystertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together672 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Butter + oystertop 12% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,184 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Butter + port winetop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,499 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Port wine + ketchuptop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together425 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Oyster + ketchuptop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together318 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, oyster, port wine, ketchup):

Lemonthe original
Applefits about as well
Grapefits about as well
Red currantfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, oyster, port wine, ketchup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.