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Salmon Pie

A baked salmon pie with a buttery flour crust and mace seasoning.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Salmon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Carefully empty the can of salmon without breaking it.

  2. Prepare a crust in a high dish beforehand.

Make the sauce

  1. In a bowl, mix flour, butter, ground mace, and salt until well combined.

  2. Thin the mixture with some of the salmon liquor and add chopped parsley and peppercorns.

  3. Stew the sauce, stirring until smooth.

Bake and serve

  1. Once the sauce is done, add the salmon and pour the mixture into the crust.

  2. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 10 minutes until heated through, then serve.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,268 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Provides the main body and flavour of the filling.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it sets into a smooth, cohesive filling.
Butter
Adds richness and helps make the sauce smooth.

The step that matters

Stew the sauce, stirring until smooth. Flour thickens only when heated while being stirred; stirring prevents lumps and scorching on the base, and the sauce must thicken before the salmon is added so the filling holds together.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, flour, butter, parsley):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, flour, butter, parsley. 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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