Courgette Cake Smoked Salmon

Appetizer, Appetizers & Snacks, Lunch, Side Dish

Grated courgette mixed with smoked salmon, fresh dill, and melted Comté, all baked into a proper savory loaf. The courgettes are cooked first with shallots to concentrate the flavour and keep the texture right. The result is moist, savoury, and brilliant warm or cold. Perfect for summer apéros, picnics, or a light lunch with salad.

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Prep Time 20 minutes mins

Cook Time 40 minutes mins

Total Time 1 hour hr

Servings 6

Ingredients 

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• 300 gr courgettes
• 1 tsp salt for draining courgettes
• 1 shallot
• 150 gr smoked salmon cut into strips or small pieces
• 3 eggs
• 120 gr plain flour
• 7 gr baking powder
• 60 gr unsalted butter
• 100 ml whole milk
• 80 gr Gruyère cheese or Comté, grated
• 1 tbsp dill optional
• 1 pinch nutmeg
• salt and black pepper

Equipment

Loaf pan

grater

frying pan

mixing bowl

whisk

wooden spoon

cooling rack

parchment paper

Instructions

1. Cook the courgettes

• Coarsely grate the courgettes. Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat. Add the shallot and cook for 2-3 minutes until softened. Add the grated courgettes, season lightly with salt, and cook for 10-12 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the courgettes are tender and most of the water has evaporated. Set aside to cool.

  This step is crucial. Raw courgettes release too much water during baking and make the cake soggy. Cooking them first concentrates the flavour and gets rid of excess moisture. Don't skip this.

2. Prep the loaf pan and oven

• Grease your loaf pan generously with butter and line the bottom with baking parchment. Preheat the oven to 180°C (160°C fan).

  Butter works better than oil here for greasing. The parchment is essential for easy unmolding.

3. Mix the wet ingredients

• In a large bowl, whisk together the eggs and milk until combined. Add the melted butter and whisk again until smooth.

  Make sure the butter has cooled slightly so it doesn't scramble the eggs when you mix it in.

4. Add the dry ingredients

• Add the flour and baking powder to the egg mixture. Whisk until you have a smooth, thick batter with no lumps. Season generously with black pepper and a pinch of nutmeg if using. Go easy on the salt, the salmon and cheese are already salty.

  The batter should be quite thick at this stage. Don't worry, the courgettes will loosen it.

5. Fold in everything else

• Add the cooled courgette mixture, salmon strips, grated cheese, and chopped dill to the batter. Fold everything together gently with a wooden spoon until evenly distributed.

  Don't overmix. You want to see distinct pieces of salmon and flecks of green dill throughout. The batter will be thick and chunky, that's exactly right.

6. Bake

• Pour the mixture into your prepared loaf pan and smooth the top. Bake for 40 minutes until golden brown on top and a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean.

  The top should be properly golden with a slight crack down the middle. If it's browning too quickly, cover loosely with foil for the last 10-15 minutes.

7. Cool and serve

• Let it cool in the loaf pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a cooling rack. Serve warm, at room temperature, or cold, sliced thickly.

  It's lovely warm when the cheese is still soft, but just as good cold the next day. The flavours develop overnight.

Notes

• Flour amount: This recipe uses 120g flour for a moist texture. If you prefer a firmer cake, increase to 150-180g flour.
• If you’re not a fan of dill, you can replace it with fresh chives.
• Offcuts smoked salmon are cheaper and work brilliantly here since you’re cutting it up anyway. Smoked trout is also a lovely alternative.
• Make ahead: Bakes perfectly the day before. Keep covered at room temperature or in the fridge. Also freezes brilliantly, slice first, wrap well, freeze for up to 3 months.
• This cake is gorgeous with a crisp green salad dressed with vinaigrette and also brilliant for picnics as it travels well and doesn’t need refrigeration for a few hours.

About this recipe

This courgette cake with smoked salmon recipe is very French in the best possible way. It’s a dish that gets made again and again every summer for apero and lunches in the garden in the sun. Cake salé, which just means savoury cake, appeared in France in the 1970s and quickly became a staple. And this particular combination, courgettes, smoked salmon and dill, is pure 1980s and 90s French entertaining. Classic, unpretentious and always good.

What cake salé actually is

The idea is simple, you take a basic cake batter, leave out the sugar, and fold in savoury ingredients. What you get sits somewhere between a quiche without the pastry and a really good savoury loaf. It’s easy to make, it can feed six or eight people, and it can be done entirely in advance. Which is probably why it caught on so fast.

The batter itself is also very forgiving and you can interchange sme ingredients to your liking. The liquid can be whole milk, but you can also add some crème fraîche for a more indulgent result. The fat is usually meted butter, but you can use olive oil or even a mix of both if you prefer. Olive oil keeps it moist for longer, which makes it better for picnics and buffets, but personally I love using French butter for this recipe.

The pairing of courgettes with smoked salmon and dill is as old as the hills. In French cooking, dill or tarragon are the herbs for smoked salmon. You find it together in everything from blinis to tartines to quiches. The fresh, slightly anise flavour cuts through the richness of the salmon exactly as it should. And the courgette adds a mild sweetness that holds everything together. Some people add a little lemon zest too, which lifts the whole thing nicely.

The key technique

The difference between a good courgette cake and a soggy one comes down to a single step: cooking the courgettes before they go into the batter. Raw grated courgette holds a lot of water, and if you add it straight in, that water releases during baking and makes the whole thing wet and heavy. French recipes almost always sauté the grated courgette with shallots first, to evaporate the moisture and concentrate the flavour. It takes about ten minutes and it makes all the difference. Don’t skip it.

The same logic applies to the salmon. Add it at the very end, off the heat, stirring it through gently. If it cooks too long it loses that silky texture and the flavour gets harsh. You want it just warmed through, not cooked.

When and how to serve it

Courgettes are everywhere in French summer markets from June onwards, and most French households keep smoked salmon (or somked trout) in the fridge for when people drop by. This vegetable cake uses both perfectly.

You’ll find it at apéro time, cut into slices and served with a nice rosé. It’s also brilliant for picnics as it travels really well. You can take it with you in a rectangular cake box to the park or the beach and slice the smoked salmon cake there. It holds well at room temperature for several hours, so it works really well for buffets too. And it makes a great lunch in thicker slices with a green salad and a spoonful of crème fraîche alongside.

It’s also a recipe that tastes better the next day, once everything has had time to settle. So making it the evening before is genuinely a good idea.

The beauty of cake salé

Once you have the basic ratio down you can change the fillings endlessly. This courgette and smoked salmon version is the summer classic, but the same batter works just as well in winter with leeks and vegetarian lardons, or spinach and goat’s cheese, or roasted peppers and feta. The method stays exactly the same every time.

That’s what I love about cake salé. It’s honest home cooking. Quick, practical, designed to use what you already have. But it looks good on a board and tastes impressive for guests. That combination of simple and special is very French, and it’s why this recipe has stayed in so many kitchen drawers for decades.