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Salmon Pudding

A steamed salmon pudding with a creamy sauce made from salmon oil, milk, and cornstarch.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Salmon Pudding

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Drain the oil from the salmon and save it for the sauce.

  2. Chop the salmon very fine.

  3. Beat the egg yolks and whites separately.

Make the pudding

  1. Mix the salmon, bread crumbs, melted butter, parsley, salt, pepper, and beaten egg yolks.

  2. Fold in the beaten egg whites gently.

  3. Pour the mixture into a buttered dish and steam for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, combine milk, salmon oil, and melted butter in a saucepan.

  2. Moisten the cornstarch with a little milk and stir it into the boiling mixture.

  3. When it begins to thicken, add the beaten egg yolk.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the juice of half a lemon.

  5. Pour the sauce around the salmon pudding and garnish with the remaining half lemon.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 of the pudding and gives it its flavor.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and help bind the pudding so it holds its shape.
Egg whites
Beaten and folded in, they lighten the mixture and give it a soft, airy rise.
Egg yolks
Bind the pudding and enrich it, and thicken the sauce when heated.
Cornstarch
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it a smooth, pourable body.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding richness and body.

The step that matters

Folding in the beaten egg whites. Overmixing or deflating the whites loses the air that lightens the pudding, so fold gently until just combined.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Parsleythe original
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, bread, butter, pepper, egg, milk, sauce. 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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