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Canned Salmon

A dish of canned salmon topped with a thickened milk and flour sauce, served over toasted buttered bread.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Canned Salmon

Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Canned Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the toast

  1. Toast the bread slices.

  2. Butter the toasted bread slices.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the canned salmon.

  2. Season the salmon with salt and pepper.

  3. Heat the milk until hot.

  4. Mix the flour and butter together until smooth.

  5. Stir the flour and butter mixture into the hot milk to thicken.

Serve

  1. Pour the thickened milk over the salmon and serve.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  3. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Canned salmon
Provides the main protein and flaky texture of the topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that is thickened into a creamy topping.
Flour
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Butter
Adds richness and works with the flour to form a smooth roux for thickening.

The step that matters

Stir the flour and butter mixture into the hot milk to thicken. Adding the flour and butter mixture to hot liquid lets the starch thicken evenly; cold or unmixed flour clumps and leaves a lumpy sauce.

“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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