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Cream Salmon. No 1

A baked casserole of salmon in a creamy sauce topped with bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream Salmon. No 1

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 the salmon

  1. Remove skin and bones from the salmon and drain the fluid.

  2. Mince the salmon finely.

Make the white sauce

  1. In a saucepan, boil the milk and thicken it with corn starch.

  2. Add butter, salt, and pepper to the sauce.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a pudding dish, layer bread crumbs, salmon, and white sauce, repeating layers.

  2. Finish with a layer of bread crumbs on top.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) until the top is 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Canned salmon
Provides the main body and flavor of the casserole.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce that moistens the layers.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a sauce by gelatinizing when heated.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a smoother, more tender sauce.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the sauce and give the layers structure, with a golden top when baked.

The step that matters

Bring the milk-starch mixture to a boil. Cornstarch only thickens once it is heated enough for its starch granules to swell and gelatinize. If the sauce is not brought to a boil, it stays thin and the casserole turns out loose and watery.

“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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