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Canned Salmon

Canned salmon served with a tomato ketchup gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Canned Salmon

Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Canned Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Heat the salmon

  1. Place the can of salmon in boiling water for 30 minutes, ensuring the water remains at boiling heat.

  2. Remove the can, wipe it off, and make a small hole in the top with scissors to pour the juice into a tin cup.

  3. Keep the juice warm on the stove without boiling.

Make the gravy

  1. If there's not enough juice, add 1 tablespoon of boiling water.

  2. Mix 1 teaspoon of butter with ½ teaspoon of flour and stir it into the juice.

  3. Boil for 2 minutes.

  4. Add a pinch of salt and 1 tablespoon of tomato ketchup.

Serve

  1. Cut the entire top off the can and let the salmon slide out whole into a warm chafing dish.

  2. Serve the gravy in a separate dish while hot.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + ketchuptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,435 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  4. Salmon + tomatotop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,439 recipes

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

  5. Butter + tomatotop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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 and body of the dish, heated gently in its can.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the gravy.
Flour
Thickens the juice into a gravy by swelling as it heats with the liquid.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity, giving the gravy its tomato flavour.

The step that matters

Mix the butter and flour into the juice, then boil for 2 minutes. Flour must be fully blended and heated so its starch swells and thickens the gravy; if the juice is not kept warm or stirred smooth, lumps form and the gravy stays thin or tastes floury.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

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