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Salmon in a Mould

A baked casserole of canned salmon mixed with eggs, butter, and cracker crumbs, topped with a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and celery match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Salmon in a Mould

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Drain the liquor from the salmon, remove the bones and skin, and chop the salmon finely.

  2. Rub the melted butter into the chopped salmon until smooth.

  3. Add coarse sea salt, black pepper, minced parsley, and optional celery to the salmon mixture.

  4. Mix in the well-beaten eggs and cracker crumbs thoroughly.

Steam and make the sauce

  1. Steam the mixture in a buttered mold for one hour.

  2. For the sauce, boil the milk and thicken it with cornstarch.

  3. Add the salmon liquor, butter, and ketchup to the sauce, then carefully stir in the egg.

  4. Boil the sauce for one minute.

Serve

  1. Turn the salmon out of the mold and pour the sauce around it.

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. Parsley + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + celerytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

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

  5. Celery + ketchuptop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together456 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Bind the salmon mixture and set firm when steamed, giving it structure.
Cracker crumbs
Absorb moisture and help the mixture hold together as it cooks.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the salmon mixture.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, providing body once thickened.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Carefully stir in the egg. Adding egg to a hot sauce can scramble it into lumps. Stir gently and keep the sauce from boiling hard at that point so it stays smooth and thick.

Swap the celery

The recipe marks celery as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, egg, butter, pepper, parsley, milk, ketchup):

  1. Capersfits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, egg, butter, pepper, parsley, milk, ketchup. 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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