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Deviled Salmon

Deviled Salmon is a baked salmon dish with butter, flour, milk, spices, and bread crumbs topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Deviled 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.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and mix in the flour.

  2. Add the milk and stir until boiling, then remove from heat.

Assemble and bake

  1. Stir in the salmon, salt, red pepper, onion juice, and white pepper.

  2. Fill the mixture into shells or cups.

  3. In a frying pan, melt 1 tablespoon of butter and add the bread crumbs.

  4. Brown the crumbs, then cover the salmon mixture with them.

  5. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 10 to 15 minutes.

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. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Butter
Enriches the flour-thickened sauce and helps the crumbs brown in the pan.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth white sauce that binds the salmon.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving the filling a creamy texture.
Salmon
Provides the main filling, held together by the sauce.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping over the filling when baked.

The step that matters

Brown the crumbs. Toasting the crumbs in butter before topping gives browning and flavor; if they are not browned first, they will stay pale and bland after the short bake.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, milk, salmon, pepper, onion, bread):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, milk, salmon, pepper, onion, bread. 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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