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Broiling Fish

Broiled salmon slices coated in butter and flour, served with a sauce of anchovies, leek, capers, and warm vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Leek and capers share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Broiling Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut slices from fresh salmon and wipe them clean and dry.

  2. Melt butter with a little flour and coarse sea salt, then coat the salmon slices in the butter mixture.

  3. Wash, bone, and chop the anchovies and leek.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt butter, add flour, anchovies, leek, capers, pepper, salt, nutmeg, warm water, and vinegar.

  2. Bring the sauce to a boil, then simmer until ready.

Broil and serve

  1. Place the salmon on a clean grill and broil over a clear, slow fire.

  2. Turn the salmon to cook evenly until done.

  3. Remove the leek from the sauce, pour the sauce into a dish, and place the broiled salmon on top.

  4. Garnish with quartered lemons.

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. Leek + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Leek + nutmegtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together152 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Capers + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together211 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Its flesh cooks to a tender, flaky texture and carries the flavour of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that helps the salmon brown and keeps it moist while broiling.
Flour
Thickens the butter and the sauce so they hold together rather than running thin.
Anchovies
Add a deep, savoury saltiness that gives the sauce its main character.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts through the rich butter.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances its richness.

The step that matters

Turn the salmon to cook evenly until done. Salmon cooks quickly and unevenly over direct heat, so turning it helps the thinner parts avoid drying out before the thicker centre is cooked through.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, flour, leek, capers, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, flour, leek, capers, pepper, vinegar. 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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