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Salmon Soup

A creamy soup made with cooked salmon, milk, butter, flour, bay leaf, onion, parsley, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley 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 Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Combine milk, bay leaf, onion, and parsley in a double boiler. Heat until it just begins to scald.

  2. Rub butter and flour together in a separate bowl, then add to the milk mixture. Stir until it thickens.

  3. Remove the bay leaf, onion, and parsley from the soup.

Finish and serve

  1. Rub the cooked salmon through a colander and stir it into the soup until smooth.

  2. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

  3. Serve 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.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  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

Cooked salmon
Provides the main body and flavor, and breaks down into a smooth texture when pressed through a colander.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup and gives it a creamy, mild richness.
Flour
Thickens the milk as its starch swells with heat, giving the soup body.
Butter
Adds fat that coats the flour and contributes richness and a smooth mouthfeel.

The step that matters

Stirring the butter and flour into the milk. Flour clumps if it hits hot liquid unblended. Rubbing it with butter first and stirring while the milk heats lets the starch disperse evenly, so it thickens the soup smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the onion

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

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

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