Skip to main content
Main

Baked Salmon Trout

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

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

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.

Bake the trout

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

  2. Place the salmon trout in a baking dish.

  3. Baste the trout often with melted butter and water.

Make the sauce

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

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

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

Serve

  1. Once the trout is cooked, place it on a serving dish.

  2. Pour the sauce around the trout.

  3. 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
The main dish, cooked gently in the oven to become moist and flaky.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and basting with it keeps the fish moist and golden.
Cream
Gives the sauce its rich body and smooth, velvety texture.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated in the cream.

The step that matters

Heat the cream mixture in a double boiler until thickened. Flour thickens the cream as its starch swells with gentle heat. Direct high heat can scorch the sauce or make the cream separate, so the gentle indirect heat of a double boiler keeps it smooth.

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.

You might also like

Salmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesCanned SalmonCanned Salmon14 recipesSmoked SalmonSmoked Salmon14 recipes