Skip to main content
Main

Salmon Cutlets

Finely chopped salmon formed into cutlets, coated in breadcrumbs and fried.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the salmon mixture

  1. Chop the salmon very finely.

  2. Melt the butter in a saucepan, add the flour, and stir until smooth.

  3. Add the milk, stir, and boil until the mixture leaves the bottom and sides of the pan clean.

  4. Add the salmon, salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and mix well.

  5. Turn the mixture onto a plate to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cold, form into cutlet shapes.

  2. Brush with beaten egg, cover with bread-crumbs, and fry in boiling fat.

  3. Drain and serve with a piece of parsley stalk or small pieces of macaroni to imitate a cutlet bone.

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

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

  3. Nutmeg + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

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

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + breadtop 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

Cooked salmon
Provides the main filling and flavour of the cutlets.
Butter
Enriches the base and adds richness to the panada.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a stiff base that binds the salmon.
Milk
Moistens the flour to form a smooth, thick panada.
Egg
Binds the shaped cutlets and helps bread-crumbs adhere for frying.

The step that matters

Cool the mixture fully before shaping. Cooling firms the starch-thickened mixture so it holds its shape. Shaping it warm makes it soft and sticky, and the cutlets may fall apart in the hot fat.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

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

More salmon cutlets recipes

with Caper Sauce 4 See all 49 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesSalmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipes