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Cooked Canned Salmon

A dish of fishballs made from canned salmon, mashed potatoes, and seasonings, fried in butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Cooked Canned Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Heat the can of salmon in a kettle of hot water for about 20 minutes.

  2. In a bowl, melt butter and mix in chopped parsley and hard boiled eggs.

  3. Turn the salad into a dish and pour the butter mixture over it.

Make and fry the fishballs

  1. In another bowl, mix the drained salmon with cold mashed potatoes, chopped onion, salt, pepper, and thyme.

  2. Form the mixture into fishballs and dip them into beaten eggs.

  3. Fry the fishballs in hot butter until golden brown.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + thymetop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  5. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Provides the main protein and flavour of the fishballs.
Cold mashed potatoes
Adds bulk and starch so the mixture holds its shape when formed.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and, beaten, form a coating that browns when fried.
Butter
Adds richness and carries browning in the frying step.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and firmness to the filling mixture.

The step that matters

Forming and frying the fishballs. Cold mashed potatoes and egg bind the mixture; if it is too wet or loose it will break apart in the hot butter. Frying in hot fat browns the outside and sets the coating before the centre falls apart.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, parsley, egg, potato, pepper, thyme):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, parsley, egg, potato, pepper, thyme. 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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