Skip to main content
Main

Escalloped Salmon

A baked salmon dish layered with bread crumbs and a milk‑butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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 ↓

Escalloped 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 the milk

  1. Heat the milk and butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add salt and pepper to the mixture.

Layer and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer 1 cup of bread crumbs.

  2. Add a layer of minced salmon on top.

  3. Pour a little of the milk mixture over the salmon.

  4. Repeat layering with salmon and bread crumbs, finishing with bread crumbs on top.

  5. Continue to moisten layers with the milk mixture.

  6. Bake at 350°F (175°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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  4. Butter + salmontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

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

  5. Milk + salmontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,577 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Form the body of the dish and soak up the milk so the layers hold together.
Milk
Moistens the crumbs and salmon, creating a soft, custard-like texture as it heats.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the milk mixture.
Salmon
Provides the main protein and flavour of the dish.

The step that matters

Continue to moisten layers with the milk mixture.. Bread crumbs dry out during baking if not kept moist, so adding milk between layers keeps the dish from becoming dry and crumbly.

“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

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesSalmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes