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Hot Salmon

A salmon dish served with a creamy sauce made from milk, corn starch, butter, egg, lemon, mace, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Hot Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Heat a can of salmon in boiling water.

  2. Open the can and let the oil drain out completely.

Make the sauce

  1. In a pot, heat the milk to a boil.

  2. Mix corn starch with cold water, then add to the boiling milk to thicken.

  3. Stir in the butter and beaten egg.

  4. Add lemon juice, mace, and cayenne pepper just before serving.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the salmon and serve.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  4. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Corn + lemontop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,927 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Provides the main body and flavour of the dish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that carries the other ingredients.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Egg
Adds richness and helps set and thicken the sauce gently.
Butter
Adds fat for smoothness and a rounder, richer flavour to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and balances its flavour.

The step that matters

Thicken the milk with corn starch. Cornstarch must be mixed with cold water first so it does not clump, then added to boiling milk so its starch granules swell and thicken the sauce evenly.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, milk, corn, butter, egg, lemon, 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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