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Salmon Grillse with a Purse of Sorrel

A salmon fillet grilled and served with sorrel sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and sorrel work together. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 99 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salmon Grillse with a Purse of Sorrel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Trim the salmon with a sharp knife and remove the skin.

  2. Prepare a gentle fire using good wood ashes.

Grill and serve

  1. Place the salmon at a distance over the fire, turning it on both sides until it is nicely colored.

  2. Pour sorrel sauce onto a serving dish and lay the salmon over it.

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. Bread + sorreltop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together99 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Salmon + breadtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together941 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Sorrel + saucetop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together158 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Salmon + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Salmon + sorreltop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together38 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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, cooked gently until flaky and nicely colored.
Sorrel sauce
Adds a tangy, acidic note that contrasts with the rich, fatty salmon.

The step that matters

Placing the salmon at a distance over the fire. A gentle, indirect heat lets the salmon cook through and color evenly without the outside burning before the center is done. Turning it on both sides promotes even browning and cooking.

Swap the sorrel

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, bread, sauce):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Sorrelthe original
  3. Garlicfits about as well
  4. Gingerfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, bread, sauce. 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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