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To Dress Dried Salmon

Sliced dried salmon served with a cream sauce and mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

To Dress Dried Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Cut the dried salmon into slices.

  2. Broil the slices in buttered paper until warmed through.

  3. Broil the slices without paper for a few minutes.

  4. Pull the salmon into flakes.

  5. Omit egg sauce if serving at breakfast.

  6. Mix the salmon flakes with chopped hard-boiled eggs.

Make the sauce

  1. Combine thin cream and butter rubbed with flour in a saucepan.

  2. Heat the mixture until boiling hot.

Serve

  1. Make a wall of mashed potatoes on a serving dish.

  2. Pour the salmon mixture into the center of the mashed potatoes.

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

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

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  4. Salmon + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Dried salmon
Forms the main body of the dish, providing savory, meaty flavor and flaky texture.
Thin cream
Supplies moisture and richness, forming the base of the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and carries flavor through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream as it heats, giving the sauce body.
Eggs (hard boiled)
Adds chopped texture and mild richness to the salmon mixture.

The step that matters

Heat the mixture until boiling hot. Flour only thickens the cream when it is heated fully, and the starch needs to cook through to lose its raw taste and give a smooth sauce.

Swap the potato

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

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