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Cream of Salmox

A creamy soup made with salmon, butter, milk, eggs, and seasonings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
By Ithaca (N.Y.) First Baptist Church. Ladies Union · From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 24 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and 81,222 recipes mention both. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk, wheat, fish (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

  1. Rub 1 tablespoon of flour and 1 cup drawn butter together in a frying pan.

  2. Add 1 can of salmon and 1 cup of milk, stirring until heated.

  3. Squeeze in the juice of 1 lemon and pour the mixture over toasted bread.

By Ithaca (N.Y.) First Baptist Church. Ladies Union. 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. See the original page.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Butter + milktop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together81,222 recipes

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

  2. Butter + cheesetop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together7,955 recipes

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

  3. Milk + cheesetop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together4,424 recipes

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

  4. Capers + saucetop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together678 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Flour + caperstop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together1,014 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Thickens the mixture as its starch swells in the hot butter and liquid.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel while carrying flavour.
Salmon
Provides the main body and savoury flavour of the dish.
Milk
Loosens the base and gives it a creamy, smooth texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, creamy flavours.

The step that matters

Rub the flour and butter together in the pan. Flour must be evenly blended into the hot fat and stirred so it cooks out and forms no lumps. Raw, unevenly mixed flour leaves a pasty taste and clumps that stay in the finished soup.

Flavor stand-ins for the capers

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

  1. Cinnamonabout as good a flavor fit
  2. Nutmegabout as good a flavor fit
  3. Gingerabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, salmon, milk, sauce, sugar, cheese. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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