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Canned Salmon, Deviled

A deviled salmon dish made with canned salmon, onion, water, flour, mustard, salt, pepper, and a browned sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Canned Salmon, Deviled

Ingredients

Directions

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

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the onion until brown.

  2. Add water, flour, English mustard, salt, and pepper; simmer.

  3. Stir in the liquor from the can of salmon, being careful not to let it burn.

Assemble and bake

  1. Place the hot salmon on a dish and spread the thick sauce over it.

  2. Set it in a hot oven (400°F / 200°C) for a moment to brown the surface.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  3. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  4. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Onion + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together32,460 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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 dish, giving the sauce a flaky base to coat.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a sauce that clings to the salmon.
Onion
Browning releases sweet, savoury flavours that deepen the sauce.
English mustard
Adds sharp, pungent heat that cuts through the richness of the fish.

The step that matters

Stirring in the salmon liquor while simmering. Flour-thickened sauces scorch easily on the bottom of the pan. Keeping the heat moderate and stirring constantly prevents burnt flavour and keeps the sauce smooth and even.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, mustard, pepper, salmon. 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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