would salmon work with this recipe?

I would do something else with salmon. Its flavor is much more assertive, and the fish is oily.

Yes, you could use salmon. Some people really like the flavor of sherry with salmon.

In the book, Peterson writes the recipe for scrod (a New England name for young fish in the cod family), but he also suggests using black sea bass, flatfish such as large flounder, fluke or sole (use big ones that are less likely to fall apart), drums, grouper, haddock, hake, halibut, mullet, ocean perch, orange roughy, rockfish, tilefish, red snapper, striped bass, wolffish, or salmon!

I would substitute a different white fish before salmon.