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Cream of Salmon

A creamy soup made with salmon, eggs, butter, flour, and stock, seasoned with pepper and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour 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 ↓

Cream of Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon and eggs

  1. Boil the salmon in salted water until soft, then chop it finely.

  2. Hard-boil the eggs, mash the yolks, and press them through a strainer.

Make the soup

  1. In a pot, combine the egg yolks with the butter and flour, then soften with ½ pint of soup stock.

  2. Add pepper and salt, bring to a boil, and stir until smooth.

  3. Add 1 quart of soup stock, bring to a boil again, and strain the mixture.

  4. Stir in the chopped salmon and serve with toast.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Salmon + eggtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Salmon
Provides the main flesh and flavour of the soup once cooked and chopped.
Egg yolks
Mashed and strained, they enrich the soup and give it a smooth, creamy body.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, contributing to a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the soup when cooked with butter and liquid, giving it body.
Soup stock
Forms the liquid base that carries the flavour and dissolves the thickened mixture.

The step that matters

Bringing the thickened mixture to a boil and stirring until smooth. Flour thickens only when its starch is heated in liquid, and stirring prevents lumps from forming as it sets. Stopping the stirring or skipping it lets clumps form in the soup.

“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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