Skip to main content
Main

Smoked Salmon Au Jeanno

Smoked salmon strips simmered in a broth-based gravy with ketchup, mustard, and cayenne, served with crackers and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Smoked Salmon Au Jeanno

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Cut the smoked salmon into strips as long as your middle finger and twice as wide.

  2. Soak the salmon strips in cold water for 2 hours.

  3. In a saucepan, cover the salmon with more cold water and bring to a gentle boil.

Make the gravy

  1. In another saucepan, heat the beef or veal broth with the boiled onion, then strain out the onion.

  2. Add ketchup, vinegar, mustard, and cayenne to the hot broth and mix well.

Finish and serve

  1. Drain the water from the salmon, wipe each piece, and butter them well.

  2. Place the buttered salmon in the hot gravy, cover, and let it simmer (do not boil) for 10 minutes.

  3. Arrange the salmon in rows on a hot dish, cover with gravy, and serve with heated crackers and butter.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Beef + oniontop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,092 recipes

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

  3. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Beef + peppertop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,971 recipes

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Smoked salmon
Provides the main flesh and smoky flavor that the gravy coats.
Beef or veal broth
Forms the savory base of the gravy and carries the other seasonings.
Ketchup
Adds tangy sweetness and body to the gravy.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich broth and balances the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that keeps the salmon moist during simmering.

The step that matters

Simmer the salmon without boiling. Boiling toughens and breaks down the delicate salmon proteins and can make the gravy cloudy or ragged. A gentle simmer cooks the fish evenly while keeping its texture tender and intact.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, beef, onion, ketchup, vinegar, pepper, butter):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Chivefits about as well
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, beef, onion, ketchup, vinegar, pepper, butter. 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

Roast BeefRoast Beef211 recipesBeef LoafBeef Loaf175 recipesSalmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipes