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Boiled Salmon with Cream Sauce

Boiled salmon served with a butter‑flour‑milk cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Boiled Salmon with Cream Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the salmon

  1. Fill a pot with cold water and add salt.

  2. Submerge the salmon and bring to a boil.

  3. Boil until the fish flakes easily or a fin can be pulled out, about 10 minutes for a large piece.

  4. Drain the fish and serve with cream sauce.

Make the cream sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Stir in the flour until smooth.

  3. Gradually add hot milk, half a cup at a time, stirring until the sauce thickens to the consistency of thick cream.

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Salmon + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,577 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

Salmon
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks through.
Butter
Fat that carries the flavour of the sauce and gives it a rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Starch that thickens the melted butter and milk into a smooth, creamy sauce.
Milk
Liquid base of the sauce that, thickened with flour, becomes creamy.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk gradually. Adding the milk a little at a time while stirring keeps the flour-butter roux smooth, so lumps do not form. The starch then thickens the liquid evenly as it heats.

“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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