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Salmon Filling for Sandwiches

A creamy salmon filling for sandwiches made with canned salmon, butter, lemon juice, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Salmon Filling for Sandwiches

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Remove salmon from the can and rinse thoroughly with warm water.

  2. Separate the salmon into flakes, discarding the skin and bones.

Make the filling

  1. Work the butter until creamy, then gradually add the salmon until the mixture holds together and can be spread evenly.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice, then mix again.

Serve

  1. Spread the filling on bread to make sandwiches.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Salmon + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Softened butter binds the flaked salmon into a creamy, spreadable mixture with rich flavor.
Salmon
Provides the main protein and flaky texture of the filling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and salmon flavor.

The step that matters

Adding the salmon to the butter. Adding salmon gradually lets the butter emulsify and coat the flakes, so the mixture holds together and spreads evenly instead of crumbling.

“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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