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Creamed Salmon

A baked salmon dish with a creamy sauce made from milk, butter, flour, eggs, and topped with crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Creamed Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sauce

  1. Empty the tin of salmon onto a dish and flake it with a fork.

  2. In a double boiler, melt 2 tablespoons of butter and 1 teaspoon of flour until smooth.

  3. Slowly add 1 pint of milk and stir until it boils.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in 2 beaten eggs.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer the flaked salmon and sauce alternately until all ingredients are used.

  2. Top with cracker or bread crumbs.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes and 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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

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

Salmon
Provides the main body and flavor of the dish.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, giving it a smooth, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds richness and helps form the smooth base of the sauce with the flour.
Flour
Thickens the butter and milk into a smooth sauce as it cooks.
Eggs
Thicken the sauce further and help it set when baked.

The step that matters

Stirring the eggs into the hot sauce. Eggs can scramble if added to very hot sauce. Removing the pan from heat before stirring in the beaten eggs lets them blend in smoothly and thicken gently.

“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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