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Salmon Draft

A steamed salmon patty made with canned salmon, breadcrumbs, eggs, butter, lemon juice, and seasonings, garnished with parsley and hard‑boiled egg rings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Salmon Draft

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Pour off the oil from the canned salmon and remove the bones.

  2. In a bowl, mix the salmon, bread crumbs, beaten eggs, butter, salt, pepper, and lemon juice until well combined.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a mold or small granite pan.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam for 1 hour.

  2. Turn out onto a dish and garnish with parsley and sliced hard boiled eggs.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Bread + eggtop 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 salmon and bread crumbs together so the cakes hold their shape.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and add body, giving the cakes a tender, not wet, texture.
Salmon
Provides the main protein and flavor, and its flakes form the body of the cakes.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more moist texture.

The step that matters

Steam for 1 hour. Steaming gently sets the egg proteins so the mixture firms up without drying out. Too much heat or time can make the cakes dense and rubbery, while too little leaves them loose and unset.

“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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