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Canned Salmon

A simple dish of canned salmon served on buttered toast with a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Canned Salmon

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 ↓

Canned Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Heat the canned salmon in a pan.

  2. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Place the heated salmon on thin slices of buttered toast.

Make the cream dressing

  1. In a separate pot, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually add the milk to the roux, stirring until thickened.

  3. Season the cream dressing with pepper and salt, then pour over the salmon on toast.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

Canned salmon
Provides the main protein and flavor of the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the toast and forms the base of the roux.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce when cooked with butter as a roux.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the cream dressing, which thickens as it heats with the roux.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk to the roux, stirring until thickened. Adding liquid slowly while stirring keeps the starch in the flour dispersed, so the sauce becomes smooth instead of lumpy. Stirring as it heats lets the starch granules swell and thicken the sauce evenly.

“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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