Skip to main content
Main

Salmon Turbot and Peas

A creamy salmon and peas dish served hot on wafers or toast, optionally baked with a breadcrumb topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Salmon Turbot and Peas

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 sauce

  1. Strain and mix the salmon and peas in a bowl.

  2. Scald the milk in a saucepan. Add the melted butter to the milk.

  3. In a small bowl, stir the flour smooth with a little cold water, then add it to the milk mixture to thicken.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Assemble and serve

  1. Combine the thickened milk mixture with the salmon and peas, and serve hot on wafers or toast.

  2. Alternatively, place the mixture in a baking dish, top with crackers or breadcrumbs and bits of butter, and brown in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 minutes.

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

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

  2. Salmon + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together375 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

Butter and flour 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 flavor of the dish.
Peas
Add sweetness and color alongside the salmon.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the flour thickens into a sauce.
Melted butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and softens the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce that binds the mixture.

The step that matters

Stir the flour smooth before adding it. Flour added directly to hot liquid clumps, because its starch surface gelatinizes before it can disperse. Mixing it smooth with cold water first lets the starch spread evenly, giving a lump-free sauce.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Sesamefits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

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

You might also like

Green PeasGreen Peas229 recipesSalmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesGreen Peas SoupGreen Peas Soup35 recipes