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Cooked Canned Salmon

Fishballs made from canned salmon, mashed potato, onion and thyme, dipped in beaten egg and fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cooked Canned Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon and sauce

  1. Heat the can of salmon in a kettle of hot water for about 20 minutes.

  2. Melt the butter in a separate bowl, then mix the chopped parsley and finely chopped hard boiled eggs into the melted butter.

  3. Turn the salmon onto a dish and pour the drawn butter over it.

Shape the fishballs

  1. In another bowl, mix the drained salmon with cold mashed potatoes, chopped onion, salt, pepper, and thyme.

  2. Form the mixture into fishballs.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the fishballs in beaten eggs.

  2. Fry the fishballs in hot butter until golden brown.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 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
Provides the main flavour and the bulk of the fishball mixture.
Cold mashed potatoes
Binds the mixture and adds body so the fishballs hold their shape.
Eggs
Bind the fishballs and, when beaten, form a coating that helps them brown.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the sauce and carries the heat for golden frying.
Onion
Adds savoury aroma and moisture to the fishball mixture.

The step that matters

Forming and frying the fishballs. The mixture is soft, so it needs to be well drained and mixed until firm enough to shape. Frying in hot butter sets the outside quickly, helping the balls keep their shape and turn golden brown.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, parsley, egg, potato, pepper, thyme):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, parsley, egg, potato, pepper, thyme. 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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