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Cream Salmon

A baked salmon dish layered with a creamy butter‑flour milk sauce and topped with bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread 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 Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sauce and salmon

  1. Drain the oil from the can of salmon and chop it finely.

  2. Rub the flour into the butter until well combined.

  3. Stir the flour-butter mixture into the boiling milk until smooth.

  4. Season the mixture with salt and pepper.

Layer and bake

  1. Butter a pudding dish and layer in the salmon.

  2. Add a layer of bread crumbs and pour some of the dressing over it.

  3. Repeat the layers until all ingredients are used, finishing with bread crumbs on top.

  4. Dot the top with a few bits of butter and bake at 350°F (175°C) until brown.

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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the main body and flavour of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce as its starch swells when heated.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour, and helps the top brown in the oven.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a creamy texture.
Bread crumbs
Soak up some of the sauce and form a crisp, browned topping.

The step that matters

Stirring the flour-butter into the boiling milk. Flour clumps if it is not well blended with the fat before it meets hot liquid. Stirring steadily while adding it lets the starch disperse and thicken evenly, so the sauce stays smooth rather than 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.

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