Skip to main content
Main

Minced Salmon

A baked salmon and egg mixture served over mashed potatoes with a creamy gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Minced 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 filling

  1. Flake the leftover salmon with your fingers.

  2. Chop the hard-boiled eggs into large pieces.

  3. Mix the salmon and eggs into the cream and butter rolled in flour.

  4. Simmer the mixture without boiling.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a shallow dish with mashed potatoes and pour the salmon mixture on top.

  2. Scrub the baking pan until clean and rub it with fresh butter.

  3. Add water, salt, pepper, and cloves to the pan.

  4. Flour the fish, add small bits of butter, and sprinkle with pounded cracker.

  5. Bake the fish in the pan for one hour at 350°F (175°C).

Finish and serve

  1. Remove the fish carefully, strain and thicken the gravy, and pour it around the fish.

  2. Serve with sliced lemons.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  3. Potato + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 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

Leftover salmon
Forms the main body of the dish and provides its flavor.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add richness and a firm, sliceable texture to the filling.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, forming the base of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the top brown during baking.
Flour
Thickens the cream and butter mixture into a smooth sauce.
Mashed potatoes
Forms a starchy base layer that holds the salmon mixture.

The step that matters

Simmer without boiling. Boiling a cream and flour mixture can curdle the cream and leave the sauce grainy or lumpy. Gentle heat keeps the sauce smooth and lets the flour thicken it evenly.

Swap the clove

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. Clovethe original

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

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesLemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesSalmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipes