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Salmon Croquettes

A fried snack of flaked salmon mixed with white sauce, lemon, pepper, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Salmon Croquettes

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 Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. In a bowl, combine the cold flaked salmon, thick white sauce, lemon juice, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

  2. Mix until a paste forms and shape into desired forms.

Coat and fry

  1. Roll each piece in bread crumbs, then dip in the beaten eggs, and roll again in bread crumbs.

  2. Fry in hot fat until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Salmon + eggtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Pepper + breadtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Salmon + breadtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together941 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Cold flaked salmon
Forms the main body and flavor of the croquettes.
Thick white sauce
Binds the salmon into a paste that holds its shape.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned outer coating when fried.
Beaten eggs
Help the bread crumbs adhere to the shaped croquettes.

The step that matters

Frying in hot fat. If the fat is not hot enough, the croquettes absorb oil and turn greasy before the crumb coating browns. Hot fat sets the crust quickly, keeping the inside moist and the outside golden.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, sauce, pepper, bread, egg):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Plumfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, sauce, pepper, bread, egg. 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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