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Sauce for Salmon Loaf

A creamy sauce made with butter, flour, milk, salmon juice, egg, seasoning, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Sauce for Salmon Loaf

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

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

  2. Stir in the flour and cook for 1-2 minutes.

  3. Gradually add the hot milk, stirring constantly until creamy.

  4. Remove from heat and mix in the salmon juice and beaten egg.

  5. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 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
Adds fat and flavour to the base of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked briefly with the butter.
Milk
Forms the liquid body of the sauce, which thickens as it heats.
Egg
Adds richness and gently thickens the sauce when stirred in off the heat.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk to the roux. Adding the liquid gradually while stirring constantly keeps the flour dispersed, so the sauce becomes smooth and creamy rather than lumpy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Raisinfits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

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