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Cream of Salmon Soup

A creamy soup made with salmon, milk, butter, flour, salt, and cayenne pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Cream of Salmon Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon and milk

  1. Drain the oil from the salmon, remove bones and skin, and mash the salmon finely.

  2. Heat 1 cup of the milk and strain it through a sieve or vegetable press.

  3. In a double boiler, heat the remaining milk.

Make the soup

  1. Rub the butter and flour together, then add to the scalded milk and stir for a moment.

  2. Add salt and cayenne, then stir in the strained salmon.

  3. Heat well and serve.

  4. For a pink color, add a drop or two of red food coloring.

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Salmon + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,577 recipes

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

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

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the soup, giving it its body and creamy character.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor and smoothing the texture of the soup.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the soup a smooth, body-rich texture.
Salmon
Provides the main flavor and protein, mashed so it blends into the creamy base.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour to the scalded milk. Flour must be fully blended into the fat before it meets hot milk, and the mixture stirred, or it clumps instead of thickening smoothly. Heating the milk in a double boiler keeps it from scorching and curdling.

“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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