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Salmon Cutlets and Green Peas

Salmon cutlets served with green peas.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 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 ↓

Salmon Cutlets and Green Peas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Flake the cooked salmon and remove any bones and skin.

  2. Season the salmon with nutmeg, grated lemon rind, lemon juice, black pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  3. Add white breadcrumbs and the egg yolk; mix well.

Shape and fry

  1. Form the mixture into balls, roll in flour seasoned with pepper and salt, dip in egg white, and then roll in crushed vermicelli.

  2. Shape the balls into cutlets and fry in hot fat until golden.

  3. Drain on paper towels and insert ½ inch of raw macaroni into the end of each cutlet.

Serve

  1. Serve with green peas.

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. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Nutmeg + flourtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cooked salmon
Forms the main body of the cutlets and gives them their flavour.
White breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the flaked salmon so the mixture holds its shape.
Egg yolk
Binds the mixture and adds richness to help the cutlets hold together.
Egg white
Helps the vermicelli coating adhere to the outside of each cutlet.
Crushed vermicelli
Forms a crisp, golden outer crust when the cutlets are fried.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the salmon.

The step that matters

Shape and fry. The coating must be fully set before frying, and the fat must be hot enough to crisp the crust quickly. Otherwise the coating can absorb oil, turn greasy, or break away from the cutlet.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Chickpeafits better
  2. Pistachiofits better
  3. Almondfits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, nutmeg, lemon, pepper, egg, 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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