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Boiled Salmon

A boiled salmon served with a creamy pea sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Boiled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the salmon

  1. Boil the salmon in water for 30 minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and stir in the flour to make a roux.

  2. Gradually add the milk, stirring until the sauce thickens.

  3. Season the sauce with pepper and salt.

  4. Warm the peas and add them to the sauce, then bring to a boil.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the boiled salmon before serving.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + peastop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

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

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

Butter
Enriches the roux and adds richness and flavor to the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter to form a roux.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, which thickens as it heats.
Peas
Add color, sweetness and texture to the sauce.

The step that matters

Gradually add the milk to the roux. Adding the milk slowly while stirring lets the starch in the flour disperse evenly. Adding it all at once can create lumps, while stirring until the sauce heats and thickens lets the starch gelatinize into a smooth sauce.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Sesamefits about as well
  3. Walnutfits about as well
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, milk, butter, flour, 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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