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Baked Salmon Trout

A baked salmon trout served with a cream sauce of butter, water, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Baked Salmon Trout

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Preheat the oven to 300°F (150°C).

  2. Place the salmon trout in a baking dish and baste it often with melted butter and water.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the cream with a few spoonfuls of hot water to prevent clotting.

  2. Stir in the melted butter, flour, and chopped parsley into the cream mixture.

  3. Heat the cream mixture in a double boiler until warm.

  4. Add the fish drippings to the cream mixture and bring to a boil to thicken.

Serve

  1. Once the trout is cooked, place it on a hot dish and pour the sauce around it.

  2. Garnish with sprigs of parsley.

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 + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Salmon + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 trout
Is the main protein, cooked whole and served as the centerpiece of the dish.
Cream
Forms the base of the sauce, adding richness and a smooth, velvety texture.
Butter
Adds fat and flavor, and keeps the fish moist while it bakes.
Flour
Thickens the cream sauce so it coats the fish rather than running thin.

The step that matters

Heating the cream sauce without curdling. Cream can curdle or separate when it gets too hot or boils hard. Diluting it with hot water first and warming it gently in a double boiler keeps it smooth. Thickening with flour also needs gentle heat so the starch sets evenly without lumps.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, cream, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Jalapenofits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, cream, flour. 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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