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Salad

Salmon Soup

A creamy soup made with milk, onion, flour, butter, salt, cayenne pepper, and chopped salmon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the soup base

  1. Heat the milk in a double boiler with the slice of onion.

  2. In a separate bowl, cream the flour into the butter.

  3. Add the flour mixture to the milk and stir to thicken.

Finish and serve

  1. Season with salt and cayenne pepper.

  2. Stir in the chopped salmon and serve when thoroughly hot.

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. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Flour + buttertop 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. Onion + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup, which the flour thickens.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, body-rich soup when cooked with it.
Butter
Blended with the flour to form a roux that helps it mix smoothly into the milk.
Salmon
Provides the main protein and flavor, stirred in at the end to heat through.

The step that matters

Stir the flour mixture into the milk. Flour clumps if added raw or unevenly to hot liquid. Creaming it into butter first and stirring while adding it spreads the starch evenly so the soup thickens smoothly rather than lumping.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Potatofits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

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