Name: Cream of Salmon
Ingredients: 1 can of salmon; ½ cup bread crumbs; 1 pint milk; 1 tablespoon butter; ¼ teaspoon salt; ¼ teaspoon pepper

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Cream of Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Spread a layer of bread crumbs in a baking dish.
Add a layer of salmon, repeating layers until the dish is full, finishing with bread crumbs on top.

Make the sauce

In a saucepan, boil the milk, butter, salt, and pepper together.
Pour the mixture over the bread and salmon layers.

Bake

Bake at 400°F (200°C) for about 20 minutes or until browned.

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.

Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,481 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Salmon + milktop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,577 recipes

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

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 flavor of the dish.
Bread crumbs: Absorb the hot milk mixture and help hold the layers together.
Milk: Forms the liquid base that cooks into a creamy, moist custard-like sauce.
Butter: Adds fat for richness and helps the top brown.

“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.