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Baked Salmon

A whole salmon baked with oil, salt, pepper, and a butter‑water gravy, finished with lemon, onion juice, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wipe the fish with a damp cloth, avoiding water.

  2. Rub the fish with salad oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Bake

  1. Place the fish in a baking pan and pour over it 1 cup of boiling water mixed with 2 tablespoons of melted butter.

  2. Cover and bake, basting every 15 minutes.

  3. Once done, transfer the fish to a hot platter and keep warm in the oven.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Thicken the remaining gravy in the pan with cornstarch mixed with cold water.

  2. Season the gravy with lemon juice and a dash of onion juice.

  3. Boil the gravy once and pour it into a gravy boat.

  4. Serve the salmon garnished 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  5. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently by baking under cover to stay moist.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the basting liquid that moistens the fish as it bakes.
Cornstarch
Thickens the pan juices into a smooth gravy when heated with liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with cornstarch. Cornstarch must be mixed with cold water before adding to hot liquid, otherwise it clumps. It thickens only when the gravy is brought to a boil, so it needs a full boil to reach its final texture.

Swap the tomato

The recipe marks tomato as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, pepper, butter, lemon, onion, ketchup, parsley):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, pepper, butter, lemon, onion, ketchup, parsley. 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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