Skip to main content
Main

Salmi of Game

A sauce of butter, flour, stock, catsup, lemon juice, mushrooms, onion extract, and cooked duck.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Salmi of Game

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Melt and brown the butter in a pan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until browned.

  3. Pour in the stock and stir until it begins to thicken.

  4. Add the cooked duck and mushrooms, stirring gently until heated through.

  5. Stir in the catsup, onion extract, and lemon juice just before serving.

  6. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  3. Mushroom + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Browns in the pan to add a nutty aroma and fat for the sauce base.
Flour
Thickens the stock into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Stock
Forms the liquid base of the sauce and carries the other flavors.
Cooked duck
Provides the main meat and richness in the finished sauce.
Button mushrooms
Add earthy flavor and a tender texture to the sauce.
Catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity to season the sauce.

The step that matters

Stir in the catsup, onion extract, and lemon juice just before serving.. Acidic and flavoring additions added too early can lose their bright taste under prolonged heat, so they are best stirred in at the end.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, lemon, mushroom, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, lemon, mushroom, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipes