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Salad

Salmon Mayonnaise

A salad dressing made with canned salmon, butter, flour, milk, egg, mustard, sugar, vinegar, salt, cayenne pepper, served over lettuce, egg, tomato.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 901 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Salmon Mayonnaise

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the dressing

  1. Melt butter in a saucepan; add flour and blend well.

  2. Gradually stir in milk and boil for 3 minutes.

  3. Add sugar, mustard, egg, vinegar, salt, and cayenne; mix well.

Assemble and serve

  1. Remove salmon from the tin.

  2. Place salmon in a salad bowl and pour dressing over it.

  3. Garnish with cut lettuce, sliced hard-boiled egg, and sliced tomato.

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. Mustard + tarragontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together901 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + tarragontop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together788 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 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

Egg
Thickens the dressing as it sets with gentle heat, adding richness.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, pourable sauce base with the melted butter.
Butter
Forms the roux with flour and adds richness to the dressing.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it boils.
Tarragon vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the dressing and balances the richness.

The step that matters

Boiling the milk sauce. Flour must be cooked in the hot butter and milk long enough to thicken smoothly and lose its raw starch taste. Stirring in the milk gradually prevents lumps.

Swap the tarragon

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Tarragonthe original

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