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Salmon Tuebot

A baked salmon casserole with butter, onion, flour, bread crumbs, and cream.

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 ↓

Salmon Tuebot

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the base

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the chopped onion or parsley.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until thick like cake dough.

Assemble and bake

  1. In a baking dish, layer the dough and salmon alternately.

  2. Cover the top with bread crumbs and moisten with cream or milk.

  3. Cover the dish tightly and bake at 400°F (200°C).

  4. Remove the cover and brown the top slightly before serving.

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

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

  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. Butter + oniontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together42,912 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the thick base.
Flour
Cooked with butter, it thickens the mixture into a firm, dough-like layer that holds the salmon.
Salmon
Provides the main protein and flavour, set in place by the cooked flour base.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden topping that browns when the cover is removed.
Cream or milk
Adds moisture to the crumb topping and helps it brown gently in the oven.

The step that matters

Cook the flour into the butter until thick. Cooking the flour in butter until it thickens sets the base into a firm, dough-like layer. If it stays thin, the layers will not hold together and the casserole will be loose when served.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, salmon, bread, cream. 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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