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Escalloped Salmon

A baked salmon dish layered with butter, crushed biscuits, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 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

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Remove skin and bones from the salmon and shred it.

Layer and bake

  1. Place a layer of fish in a pudding dish and sprinkle with salt and cayenne pepper.

  2. Add small lumps of butter and crushed biscuit crumbs.

  3. Repeat the layers and finish with biscuit crumbs on top.

  4. Add just enough milk to cover the mixture.

  5. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 20 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. Pepper + biscuittop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together841 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

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

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

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

  5. Butter + biscuittop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,009 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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 provides its flavour and protein structure.
Soda biscuits
Crumbs soak up milk and butter, giving the layers a soft, bound texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, helping the top brown and the layers taste rounded.
Milk
Provides moisture that cooks into a set, custard-like binder around the fish.

The step that matters

Add just enough milk to cover the mixture. Too much milk makes the dish watery and slow to set, while too little leaves the crumbs dry and the top unevenly cooked.

“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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