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Salmon Balls

Deep-fried balls of flaked salmon mixed with peas, coated in breadcrumbs, served with a sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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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 Balls

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salmon mixture

  1. Moisten the salmon with a sauce made of milk and flour.

  2. Season the salmon with salt, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Cool the salmon mixture.

Make the pea filling

  1. Heat peas with butter.

  2. Add sugar to the peas.

  3. Add flour to the peas.

  4. Add cream to the peas.

  5. Shape the cooled mixture around creamed peas.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip the balls in breadcrumbs.

  2. Dip the balls in beaten egg.

  3. Dip the balls again in breadcrumbs.

  4. Fry the balls in deep oil until golden brown.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce around the salmon balls.

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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Salmon + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together375 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,005 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 of the balls and gives them their savoury flavour.
Milk and flour sauce
Moistens the salmon and binds it so the balls hold together when shaped.
Peas
Provide a sweet, tender centre that contrasts with the salmon.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the creamed peas.
Egg
Binds the breadcrumb coating so it sticks to the balls and browns when fried.

The step that matters

Cool the salmon mixture before shaping. A warm, soft mixture is hard to shape and may fall apart. Cooling firms the starch-thickened binder so the balls hold their shape in the hot oil.

Swap the peas

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, milk, flour, lemon, pepper, butter, sugar):

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chickpeafits better
  3. Pistachiofits better
  4. Peasthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, milk, flour, lemon, pepper, butter, sugar. 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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