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Salmon Loaf

A baked loaf of shredded salmon with peas, butter, flour, crackers, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Salmon and peas work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 375 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Salmon Loaf

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Heat the peas in a saucepan.

  2. Melt the butter and brown the flour.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer the salmon over the peas.

  2. Add the browned flour mixture to the salmon and peas to moisten.

  3. Roll the crackers and lay them over the top.

  4. Add salt to taste and bake for 20 minutes in a casserole dish at 350°F (175°C).

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. Salmon + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together375 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  4. Peas + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,887 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Peas + flourtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,837 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, 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
Forms the bulk of the loaf and gives it its flaky texture.
Flour
Thickens the butter mixture so it binds the salmon and peas together.
Butter
Adds richness and, when browned, a nutty flavour.
Crackers
Form a crisp, golden topping over the loaf.

The step that matters

Brown the flour in the butter. Flour needs to cook until evenly golden and nutty. Stop too early and it tastes raw and pasty; go too far and it turns bitter and dark, which will carry through the whole loaf.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, flour):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Macadamia nutfits better
  3. Sesamefits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, flour. 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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