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Salmon Sauce

A sauce made with corn starch, butter, tomato catsup, milk, salt, and pepper, served over salmon loaf.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Corn and tomato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,099 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Salmon Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Add melted butter to strained salmon liquor.

  2. Stir in milk and bring to a boil.

  3. Dilute corn starch with 2 tablespoons cold milk and add to the mixture slowly, stirring constantly until smooth and glossy.

  4. Stir in tomato catsup, salt, and pepper.

  5. Beat well with a wire whisk and pour around Salmon Loaf.

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. Corn + tomatotop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  4. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Corn + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,324 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the sauce as it heats, giving it body and a glossy finish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, rounded flavour to the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding creaminess.
Tomato catsup
Adds sweetness and acidity, giving the sauce its tangy flavour.

The step that matters

Adding the cornstarch slurry. Cornstarch must be diluted in cold milk first and added slowly while stirring, or it clumps. Starch granules swell and thicken only when hot liquid is stirred, so constant stirring keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Potatofits better
  3. Tomatothe original
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against corn, butter, milk, pepper. 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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