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Salmon Croquettes

A fried salmon mixture formed into cakes or rolls, coated in egg and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Salmon Croquettes

Why it works: Milk and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 11,466 recipes. Both carry 2-undecenal, which smells sweet. The science ↓

Salmon Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the base

  1. Boil the milk and thicken it with flour; let it cool.

  2. Mince the salmon until very fine and add white pepper.

  3. Moisten the minced salmon with the cooled milk and work it into a paste.

  4. If the mixture is too thin, add bread crumbs.

Shape and fry

  1. Shape the mixture into cakes, rolls, or cones.

  2. Dip each shape in beaten egg and then in bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in hot fat until golden brown.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  2. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Salmon + eggtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Milk
Thickened with flour, it moistens the salmon and keeps the croquettes tender.
Flour
Thickens the boiled milk into a sauce that binds the salmon together.
Salmon
Forms the main body of the croquettes and provides their flavour.
Egg
Coats the shapes so the bread crumbs adhere and help them brown and hold together.
Bread crumbs
Stiffen a mixture that is too thin and form a crisp golden coating when fried.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until golden brown. Fat that is not hot enough lets the coating soak up oil before it sets, leaving greasy, loose croquettes. Hot fat sets the egg and crumb coating quickly and browns it, holding the shape together.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

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