Skip to main content
Soup

Cream of Salmon

A creamy soup made from boiled salmon, cream soup, milk, butter, flour, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Prepare the salmon

  1. Boil the salmon in enough water to cover it with a heaping tablespoon of salt for about 10 minutes until the flakes separate.

  2. Drain the salmon, remove the skin and bones, and rub it through a fine sieve or colander with a potato masher.

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and flour over medium heat, stirring until smooth.

  2. Gradually add hot milk, half a cup at a time, stirring until smooth before adding more, until you have added a quart.

Combine and serve

  1. Combine the salmon puree with the cream soup 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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Salmon + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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 flavor and a flaked, tender body once pureed into the soup.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and giving a smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Cooked with the butter, it thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy base.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the white sauce, adding creaminess and body.
Cream soup
Supplies the bulk and creamy texture the salmon puree is blended into.

The step that matters

Adding the hot milk gradually. Adding liquid slowly while stirring lets the starch in the flour disperse evenly, so the base cooks smooth instead of lumpy.

“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.

More cream of salmon recipes

Soup 5 See all 5 →

You might also like

Indian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and SpinachIndian Spiced Potato Soup with Tofu and Spinach448 recipesClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd SoupClear Carrot and Bottle Gourd Soup65 recipesMock Bisque SoupMock Bisque Soup51 recipesCream of Asparagus SoupCream of Asparagus Soup42 recipes