Skip to main content
Main

Scalloped Salmon

A baked salmon dish topped with butter, cream, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Scalloped Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Remove bones from the salmon and place it in a bowl.

  2. Add butter and cream to the salmon and heat on the stove.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer bread crumbs and salmon mixture, seasoning with salt and pepper.

  2. Add enough cream to moisten the layers.

  3. Bake at 300°F (150°C) for 30 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 + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Salmon + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,401 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Provides the main body and flavor of the dish.
Bread crumbs
Form the layers and absorb liquid to give the dish structure.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavor through the mixture.
Cream
Moistens the salmon and crumbs so they do not dry out in the oven.

The step that matters

Moistening the layers before baking. Bread crumbs absorb liquid unevenly, so the cream must be spread through every layer. Dry pockets stay dry and crumbly after baking, while overly wet areas turn soggy.

“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.

You might also like