Name: Escalloped Salmon
Ingredients: 1 can of salmon; Post Toasties cereal; butter; coarse sea salt; red pepper; lemon juice; 2 cups of milk; 2 eggs

Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 ↓

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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Layer the dish

Layer Post Toasties on the bottom of a baking dish.
Add a layer of salmon, small pieces of butter, coarse sea salt, red pepper, and a little lemon juice.
Continue layering with Post Toasties until all salmon is used.

Add the custard and bake

In a bowl, mix milk, beaten eggs, and butter.
Pour the mixture over the salmon layers.
Bake 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.

Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,481 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,227 recipes

Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs: Bind the milk mixture and set into a custard that holds the layers together when baked.
Milk: Forms the liquid base that soaks the cereal and salmon and sets with the eggs.
Post toasties cereal: Acts as the starchy layer that soaks up the custard and gives the dish its body.
Salmon: Provides the main protein and flavour, layered through the dish.
Butter: Adds richness and fat that carries flavour and helps the top brown lightly.

“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.