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Timbales of Salmon

A baked salmon dish mixed with butter, eggs, sugar, salt, pepper, flour, and cream, served with lobster or anchovy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Timbales of 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Grease the molds with butter and sprinkle a little flour to prevent sticking.

Make the mixture

  1. In a bowl, combine the salmon, butter, eggs, sugar, salt, pepper, flour, and cream.

  2. Beat the mixture with a potato masher for 30 minutes.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the molds in a roasting pan filled with water.

  2. Bake for 30 minutes and serve with lobster or anchovy sauce.

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

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

  2. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

Butter and flour 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

Salmon
Forms the main body of the timbales and gives them their flavour.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when baked, giving the timbales structure.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the baked timbales tender.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and softness, and greases the molds to prevent sticking.
Flour
Helps thicken the mixture and supports the set structure.

The step that matters

Beating the mixture for 30 minutes. Beating breaks the salmon into a smooth, evenly combined mixture, so the eggs and cream set into a uniform, tender texture rather than a lumpy one.

“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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