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Salmon a LA Reine

A creamy salmon dish with butter, flour, water, lemon, onion, egg yolks, and seasonings.

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

Salmon a LA Reine

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a chafing dish.

  2. Gradually stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Add the water, lemon juice, pepper, salt, minced onion, and mashed egg yolks.

Finish and serve

  1. Incorporate the salmon and let it simmer for about five minutes.

  2. Serve hot.

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

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

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Enriches the base and carries flavour into the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Egg yolks
Add richness and body, helping the sauce turn creamy.
Salmon
Provides the main protein and flavour of the dish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the flour until smooth. Adding flour all at once forms lumps that are hard to remove. Stirring it in gradually into the melted butter lets the starch coat each grain and mix evenly, giving a smooth base for the sauce.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, lemon, egg, salmon, 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.

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