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Salmon Balls

Salmon balls with creamed peas, breaded and fried, served with Hollandaise 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 with salt, lemon juice, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Cool the mixture.

Shape and coat

  1. Shape the mixture into balls, placing creamed peas in the center of each ball.

  2. Dip each ball in bread crumbs, then in beaten egg, and again in bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry the balls in deep fat until golden brown.

  2. Heat peas with butter. Add sugar, flour, and cream.

  3. Combine the creamed peas with Hollandaise sauce. Pour the mixture around the salmon balls before serving.

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Bread + peastop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together804 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexyl acetate (fruity, apple).

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

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

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 and flavor of the balls.
Flour
Thickens the milk sauce so the salmon mixture holds together.
Milk
Makes a moist sauce that keeps the salmon mixture from drying out.
Egg
Binds the bread crumb coating and helps it set and brown when fried.
Bread crumbs
Forms a crisp, golden coating on the outside of each ball.
Peas
Provide a creamy filling at the center of each ball.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture before shaping. A warm, loose salmon mixture is soft and sticks to the hands and sets poorly. Chilling firms the starch and protein so the balls keep their shape through coating and frying.

Swap the peas

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

  1. Peasthe original
  2. Chickpeafits about as well
  3. Chestnutfits about as well
  4. Almondfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, milk, flour, lemon, 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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