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Soup

Cream of Salmon

A creamy salmon soup made with butter, flour, milk, salmon, pepper, salt, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 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 ↓

Cream of Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, cream together the butter and flour until smooth.

  2. Gradually stir in the boiling milk, adding ½ cup at a time.

Finish

  1. Warm the salmon and rub it through a sieve into the mixture.

  2. Season with pepper, coarse sea salt, and nutmeg.

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. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, velvety cream sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that becomes the body of the cream.
Salmon
Provides the main flavour and body once rubbed into the sauce.

The step that matters

Adding the boiling milk gradually. Adding the hot milk a little at a time while stirring lets the flour starch disperse evenly, preventing lumps and giving a smooth, thick sauce.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Capersfits about as well

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