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Creamed Salmon

Creamed salmon with peanuts and egg whites served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Creamed Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a double boiler over hot water.

  2. Add the flour, salt, pepper, and cayenne, stirring until smooth.

  3. Gradually stir in the hot milk until thick.

Finish and serve

  1. Mix in the canned salmon, chopped peanuts, and chopped egg whites.

  2. Serve hot over buttered 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.

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. Butter + milktop 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 + peanuttop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,048 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + peanuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,427 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce and carries flavour while the flour cooks smooth.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, creamy sauce that holds the other ingredients together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it heats.
Canned salmon
Provides the main protein and savoury flavour, bound into the sauce.
Chopped peanuts
Add crunch and nutty flavour against the soft creamed sauce.
Hard boiled egg whites
Add body and mild flavour, firming the mixture slightly as they are folded in.

The step that matters

Gradually stir in the hot milk until thick. Adding the hot milk slowly while stirring keeps the flour dispersed, so the sauce thickens smoothly instead of forming lumps.

Swap the peanut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Walnutfits better
  3. Peasfits better
  4. Peanutthe original

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