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Saumon, Sauce Mayonnaise

A salmon fillet served with a thick mayonnaise sauce and garnished with lemon, lettuce, pickled beets, eggs, and olives.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lettuce and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,580 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Saumon, Sauce Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Poach and cool

  1. Select a fine large salmon and boil it as directed.

  2. Place the boiled salmon between two dishes and set aside to cool.

  3. Pour a little fish stock over the salmon to keep it moist.

Coat and garnish

  1. Prepare 2 to 3 times the usual quantity of mayonnaise.

  2. Carefully place the fish on a long serving dish and spread the mayonnaise over the entire fish.

  3. Garnish with sliced lemon, crisp lettuce leaves, pickled beets, hard-boiled eggs, and olives.

  4. Chill in a very cold place until ready to serve.

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. Lettuce + olivetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lemon + lettucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,559 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Salmon + fishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Fish + olivetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together279 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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, and its flesh is cooked through by boiling.
Mayonnaise
Adds richness and fat, coating the fish and keeping its surface moist.
Fish stock
Poured over the salmon to add moisture while it cools.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add a firm, mild contrast in texture to the rich fish and mayonnaise.

The step that matters

Keeping the salmon moist while it cools. Once cooked, salmon flesh loses moisture as it cools and dries, so the fish stock poured over it helps keep the flesh tender. Covering it while cooling also slows surface drying.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, fish, lemon, egg, olive):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, fish, lemon, egg, olive. 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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