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Salmon Loaf

A steamed loaf of mashed salmon mixed with bread crumbs, eggs, and seasonings, served with a butter‑milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon 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 Loaf

Ingredients

Directions

Make the loaf

  1. Remove bones from the salmon and mash it with the soft butter until smooth.

  2. Mix in the moistened bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and lemon juice. Stir in the beaten eggs until well combined.

  3. Transfer the mixture to a well-buttered quart mold or pan, cover, and steam for 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. For the sauce, bring 1 cup of milk to a boil, then thicken with corn starch dissolved in a little milk. Add 1 tablespoon of butter, season with salt and pepper, and stir in the beaten egg.

Serve

  1. Serve the salmon loaf on a platter, pouring the sauce around it, and garnish with lemon or parsley.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  3. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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 loaf and provides its flavour.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set during steaming to hold the loaf together.
Bread crumbs
Soaked in milk, they add moisture and keep the loaf tender.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the salmon mixture.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk to give the sauce body.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce. Corn starch must be fully dissolved in cold or room-temperature milk before it goes into the hot milk, otherwise it clumps. Starch thickens as it heats, so the sauce should be stirred until it turns smooth and glossy.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Figfits about as well
  4. Avocadofits less well

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