Name: Salmon Loaf
Ingredients: 1 tin salmon; ½ cup bread crumbs; ½ cup milk; 2 eggs; juice of ½ lemon; 1 teaspoon mustard; ¼ teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon parsley or celery

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 Loaf

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

In a bowl, combine the salmon, bread crumbs, milk, eggs, lemon juice, mustard, salt, and parsley or celery. Mix well until all ingredients are combined.
Transfer the mixture to a greased loaf pan.

Cook

Steam for 1 hour.

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Mustard + parsleytop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together2,588 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Lemon + mustardtop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together3,816 recipes

Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).
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 mixture and set into a firm, sliceable loaf as they cook.
Bread crumbs: Absorb the milk and add body so the loaf holds together.
Milk: Moistens the bread crumbs and keeps the loaf tender rather than dry.
Salmon: Provides the main protein and flavour of the loaf.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, bread, milk, egg, lemon, parsley):

Asparagusfits better
Shallotfits better
Chivefits better
Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, bread, milk, egg, lemon, parsley. 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.