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Escalloped Salmon

A baked salmon dish layered over crackers with butter, salt, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk 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 ↓

Escalloped Salmon

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Assemble

  1. Drain the oil from the can of salmon.

  2. Layer rolled crackers in the bottom of a baking dish.

  3. Add a layer of salmon on top of the crackers.

  4. Repeat layers until all salmon is used.

  5. On each layer of crackers, add small pieces of butter and a little coarse sea salt.

  6. Moisten each layer thoroughly with milk.

Bake

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for twenty minutes.

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

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

  2. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Salmon + milktop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,577 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Forms the main body of the dish and supplies its savory flavor and texture.
Rolled crackers
Absorb the milk and butter, forming a soft, structured base between the salmon layers.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the top brown and the layers taste rounded.
Milk
Moistens the crackers so they soften and bind, keeping the dish from drying out in the oven.

The step that matters

Moisten each layer thoroughly with milk. The crackers need enough liquid to soften through the whole dish. Dry pockets stay hard after baking, while the milk that soaks in gives a cohesive, moist texture.

“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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