Skip to main content
Main

A Simple Breakfast Dish

A salmon custard made by simmering canned salmon, then coating it with a milk, corn starch, butter, and egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

A Simple Breakfast Dish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Put the canned salmon into a saucepan and cover with boiling water. Cook for ten minutes.

  2. Remove the salmon from the can and drain the liquid into a separate dish.

  3. Separate the skin and bones from the salmon and place it in a hot dish.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the milk, corn starch, salmon liquor, butter, salt, pepper, and beaten egg.

  2. Pour the sauce over and around the salmon. Serve at once.

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  4. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Thickens the sauce as it sets and adds richness to the custard.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, cohesive sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard and adds creaminess.
Salmon
Provides the main flesh and flavor the sauce surrounds.

The step that matters

Adding the sauce to the hot salmon. Corn starch needs to be combined smoothly with the liquid before heating to avoid lumps. The egg must be beaten and mixed in without curdling, so keep the sauce gentle and serve it promptly while it is still warm and loose.

“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

Corn FrittersCorn Fritters203 recipesSalmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesCream of Corn SoupCream of Corn Soup50 recipes