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Salmon Butter Gravy

A gravy made from flour, butter, and boiling water served over warm canned salmon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Salmon Butter Gravy

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Warm the salmon

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the can of salmon on a platter and warm it in the oven.

Make the gravy

  1. In a saucepan, combine the flour and butter until well blended.

  2. Gradually add the boiling water while stirring steadily.

  3. Boil for a few minutes until the gravy is spongy.

Serve

  1. Turn the salmon over 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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Salmon + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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
Forms the main body of the dish, with the gravy served over it.
Flour
Thickens the gravy as its starch swells and sets when boiled in liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and helps the flour blend smoothly into the mixture.
Boiling water
Hydrates the flour to form the liquid base of the gravy.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling water. Pour the water in gradually while stirring steadily. If the liquid goes in too fast, the flour clumps instead of dispersing evenly, leaving lumps in the gravy.

“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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