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Escalloped Salmon

A baked salmon dish with breadcrumb topping and white sauce.

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

  1. Drain the canned salmon, remove all skin and bones, and mince the fish finely.

  2. Prepare the bread crumbs by finely powdering them.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, boil the milk and thicken it with corn starch.

  2. Add butter, white pepper, and salt to the sauce.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer the ingredients: start with a thin layer of crumbs, then a layer of minced fish, followed by a layer of white sauce. Repeat until all ingredients are used, finishing with crumbs on top.

  2. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until the crumbs are 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.

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 + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Corn + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Canned salmon
Forms the main body of the dish as the flaked fish layers.
Milk
Becomes the base of the white sauce that moistens the layers.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a sauce that holds the layers together.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the white sauce.
Bread crumbs
Form the layers and crisp to a golden brown on top.

The step that matters

Thickening the milk sauce. Corn starch must be fully heated in the boiling milk and stirred to avoid lumps; heating gelatinizes the starch so the sauce thickens evenly and holds the layers together when baked.

Swap the white pepper

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, milk, corn, butter, bread. 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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