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Cold Salmon Mousse

A chilled mousse of salmon, cream, gelatin, and eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and gelatin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,628 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Cold Salmon Mousse

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. In a saucepan, cook the beaten yolks of 2 eggs with ½ teaspoon salt, a dash of paprika, and a grated onion in ⅓ cup cream and ⅔ cup fish stock or boiling water until it coats the spoon.

  2. Add ¼ package gelatin softened in ¼ cup cold water and mix well.

  3. Beat in ½ cup cooked salmon until smooth.

Fold and set

  1. While cooling over ice water, fold in 1 cup whipped cream until increased in bulk threefold and firm.

  2. Turn the mixture into a chilled mold and refrigerate until set.

Serve

  1. Serve turned out from the mold with lettuce, oil, and vinegar.

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. Cream + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Fish + salmontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,078 recipes

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

  3. Cream + salmontop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  4. Egg + salmontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Onion + creamtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,827 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

Onion and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,827 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the warm base into a custard that coats a spoon and helps bind the mousse.
Gelatin
Sets the mousse so it holds its shape when turned out of the mold.
Cream, whipped
Adds air and a light, creamy texture to the mousse.
Cooked salmon
Provides the main fish flavour and body of the mousse.

The step that matters

Folding in the whipped cream while cooling. If the base is too warm, the whipped cream will deflate and melt; if it is too cold or set, it will not blend evenly. Cooling over ice water until thickened keeps the air in the cream and gives a light, firm texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cream, fish, gelatin, salmon):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cream, fish, gelatin, 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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