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Salmon Box

A steamed salmon and rice dish topped with a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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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 Box

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the box

  1. Grease a bread pan or mold with butter.

  2. Line the pan with warm steamed rice, placing the salmon in the center.

  3. Season the salmon with salt and pepper, then cover it with the remaining rice.

Steam and make the sauce

  1. Steam for 1 hour.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, stir in the flour and slowly add the hot water.

  3. Mix in the beaten egg yolks and lemon juice.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the salmon box before serving.

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. Rice + peppertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,379 recipes

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

  3. Rice + lemontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,366 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Rice
Forms the bulk of the box and holds its shape as it steams.
Salmon
Provides the main protein and flavor at the center of the box.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the sauce and helps grease the pan.
Flour
Thickens the butter and water into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and help it thicken and turn creamy when gently heated.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, buttery sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing the egg yolks into the sauce. Egg yolks can scramble if the sauce is too hot when they are added. Stirring them in off the heat or over low heat keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, rice, salmon, pepper, flour, egg):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Limefits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, rice, salmon, pepper, flour, egg. 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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