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Creamed Peas and Salmon

A creamy sauce of butter, flour, and milk served with flaked salmon, lemon juice, and peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Creamed Peas and Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat.

  2. Add the flour and stir until well blended and smooth.

  3. Gradually add the milk, cooking until the sauce is smooth.

Combine and season

  1. In a bowl, combine the flaked salmon and lemon juice; let it stand.

  2. Add the salmon mixture and drained peas to the sauce.

  3. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Lemon + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,005 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Melts to form the fat base that the flour cooks into a roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce when cooked with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the sauce, giving it body and a creamy texture.
Canned salmon
Supplies the main protein and savory flavor in the creamed mixture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and the flavor of the salmon.

The step that matters

Cooking the milk into the sauce. Milk added too quickly or without stirring can lump, because starch in the flour needs to be dispersed before it thickens. Adding the milk gradually while stirring keeps the sauce smooth as it heats and thickens.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chickpeafits about as well
  3. Pistachiofits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

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

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