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Banked Salmon

A baked salmon served with mashed potatoes and a white sauce, garnished with parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Banked Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the potatoes

  1. Peel and quarter the potatoes, then boil them until tender.

  2. Drain the potatoes, add 1 tablespoon of butter, season with salt and pepper, and moisten with milk or cream. Mash until light and creamy.

Make the white sauce

  1. While the potatoes are boiling, prepare the white sauce: Heat 1 pint of milk in a saucepan.

  2. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in the saucepan, then whisk in 2 tablespoons of flour and a quarter of the hot milk until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the remaining milk, stirring until fully blended. Season with 1 teaspoon salt and 1 teaspoon white pepper.

Assemble and serve

  1. Heat the can of salmon in hot water until warmed through.

  2. Drain the salmon, flake it with a fork, and arrange it in the center of a platter.

  3. Heap the hot mashed potatoes around the salmon and pour the white sauce over everything.

  4. Garnish the edges of the platter with bits of parsley.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Potato + milktop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,z)-2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, melon).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

Potatoes
Boiling softens the starch so the potatoes mash into a smooth, creamy base.
Flour
Cooked with butter, it forms a roux that thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce.
Milk
Forms the body of the white sauce and, with cream, moistens the mashed potatoes.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the mashed potatoes and gives the roux its fat base.
Salmon
Provides the main protein, flaked and warmed through to serve.

The step that matters

Whisking flour into the hot butter and a quarter of the milk. Adding the flour and only part of the milk first lets the roux blend smoothly; adding all the liquid at once can leave lumps in the white sauce.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, potato, butter, pepper, milk, sauce, 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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