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Salmon Soup

A creamy soup made with salmon, milk, and veal stock, thickened with flour and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Salmon Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Cover the salmon with boiling water and simmer for 15 minutes.

  2. Remove the skin and bones, then mash the salmon through a colander.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, bring the milk and veal stock to a boil.

  2. Stir in the flour mixed with butter until thickened.

  3. Add the mashed salmon and heat until it reaches a boil again.

  4. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Flavor option

  1. If you don't have stock, use more milk and boil with onion, bay leaf, and parsley for flavor.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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

Salmon
Provides the main body and flavor of the soup.
Milk
Forms the creamy liquid base of the soup.
Veal stock
Adds savory depth to the liquid base.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth soup body.
Butter
Mixed with flour to help it thicken the soup smoothly and add richness.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour and butter into the boiling liquid. Flour clumps if dropped in raw, so mixing it with butter first and stirring as it goes helps it disperse evenly. Stirring while the liquid heats lets the starch swell and thicken the soup smoothly.

Swap the onion

The recipe marks onion as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, milk, veal, flour, butter, pepper, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, milk, veal, flour, butter, pepper, parsley. 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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