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Frigassee Salmon

A stewed salmon dish flavored with tomatoes, mustard, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Shallot and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 859 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Frigassee Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the stew

  1. Combine salmon pieces, water, salt, white pepper, clove, clove of mace, sugar, shallot, and mustard mixed with vinegar in a stewpan.

  2. Bring to a boil, then add tomatoes and parsley.

  3. Simmer gently for 45 minutes.

Serve

  1. Serve hot, garnished with triangular pieces of dry toast.

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. Shallot + mustardtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together859 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Clove + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,677 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Clove + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,829 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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, cooking into tender flakes in the simmering liquid.
Tomatoes
Add acidity and body, breaking down into the sauce as the stew simmers.
Vinegar
Adds sharpness that balances the sweetness of the sugar and the richness of the fish.
Shallot
Contributes a mild, savoury onion-like aroma to the stewed liquid.

The step that matters

Simmer gently for 45 minutes. Holding the liquid at a gentle simmer keeps the salmon pieces tender and intact, since a hard boil toughens the proteins and breaks the fish apart.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, clove, mace, sugar, shallot, mustard, vinegar):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, clove, mace, sugar, shallot, mustard, vinegar. 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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