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Creamed Salmon

A salmon dish with a milk and butter gravy thickened with flour and seasoned with paprika.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Creamed Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove bones and skin from the salmon and break it into serving pieces.

  2. Lay the salmon pieces on a platter.

Make the gravy

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk.

  2. Add the butter and flour dissolved in a little water to the milk.

  3. Cook slowly until the mixture thickens.

Serve

  1. Pour the thickened gravy over the salmon.

  2. Add a few dashes of paprika and serve hot.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Walnut + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Walnut + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

Red salmon
Provides the main body and flavor of the dish, served flaked over the gravy.
Milk
Forms the base of the creamy gravy, giving it body and a smooth, rich texture.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it cooks, giving the gravy its body and structure.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, contributing flavor and a smoother mouthfeel to the gravy.

The step that matters

Cook slowly until the mixture thickens. Flour thickens milk as its starch granules swell with heat; cooking too fast or at high heat can scorch the milk on the bottom or leave the flour tasting raw and the sauce lumpy.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Sesamefits about as well
  3. Peasfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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