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Blanquette of Salmon

A salmon dish with white sauce, lemon, cayenne, onion juice, served hot with potato border or shells and buttered breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Blanquette of Salmon

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 the salmon

  1. Remove oil and bones from the salmon and flake it finely.

Make the blanquette

  1. Combine the salmon with the white sauce and seasonings.

Serve and brown

  1. Serve hot in a potato border or in shells topped with buttered bread crumbs.

  2. Brown in the oven 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Salmon + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Salmon + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,529 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sauce + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together10,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Sauce and onion barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 10,474 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
Provides the main flaked body and protein of the dish.
White sauce
Adds moisture and a creamy binding that holds the flaked fish together.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce and fish flavour.
Onion juice
Adds a subtle savoury aroma to the sauce.

The step that matters

Brown in the oven at 350°F (175°C). The salmon is already cooked, so the oven only needs to colour the surface. Browning too long dries the sauce and toughens the flaked fish, so watch it closely and stop once the top is golden.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, sauce, lemon, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, sauce, lemon, 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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