Why it works: Salmon and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 535 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓
Broiled Salmon
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare the salmon
Dry the salmon slices with a cloth and season with salt and pepper.
Dredge the slices in sifted flour.
Cook
Grease a gridiron with suet and broil the slices until cooked through.
Wrap and broil
Butter sheets of white paper.
Place each salmon slice on a sheet.
Fold the paper around the fish.
Broil the wrapped salmon gently over a clear fire.
Serve
Serve with anchovy or caper sauce, adding chopped herbs and spice if desired.
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.
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Salmon + anchovytop 11% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together535 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
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Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together3,697 recipes
Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).
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Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together4,481 recipes
Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
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Pepper + anchovytop 17% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together3,232 recipes
Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
Flour and butter 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 slices
- Forms the main body of the dish and cooks through to a flaky texture under heat.
- Sifted flour
- Forms a thin coating on the fish that helps it brown and hold its surface during broiling.
The step that matters
Broil the wrapped salmon gently. Paper-wrapped fish cooks partly in its own moisture. Too fierce a fire can scorch the paper and dry the flesh before the center is cooked, so gentle heat keeps it moist and evenly done.
“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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