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Salmon Loaf

A steamed loaf made from canned salmon, butter, eggs, bread crumbs, and milk, topped with a ketchup‑cornstarch sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Salmon Loaf

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the loaf

  1. Shred the salmon and mix it with the softened butter.

  2. Beat the eggs and mix them with the bread crumbs.

  3. Combine all the ingredients together.

  4. Butter a mold and steam for 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, combine the milk and oil from the salmon in a saucepan.

  2. Add 1 tablespoon of butter and bring to a boil.

  3. Thicken the mixture with 1 teaspoon of cornstarch.

  4. Stir in 1 beaten egg at the end, along with a pinch of cayenne pepper and 1 teaspoon of ketchup.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a firm loaf as they cook.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and give the loaf a softer, lighter body.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the salmon mixture and the sauce.
Salmon
Provides the main flavor and protein that forms the body of the loaf.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding creaminess.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce before adding the egg. Cornstarch thickens only when the liquid reaches a boil and is held there briefly. Adding the beaten egg to a very hot sauce can scramble it, so stir it in gently at the end.

“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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