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Salmon Pie, to Be Eaten Cold

A cold salmon pie made with canned salmon, fresh fish, butter, breadcrumbs, poulette sauce, eggs, and puff pastry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Salmon and fish are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,078 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Salmon Pie, to Be Eaten Cold

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the forcemeat

  1. Drain the canned salmon and cut it into fillets.

  2. Prepare the forcemeat by passing the fresh fish through a wire sieve.

  3. Mix the fish puree with butter, breadcrumbs, salt, and pepper.

  4. Moisten the mixture with poulette sauce and bind with raw eggs.

Assemble and bake

  1. Line a pie tin with pastry and fill with a layer of forcemeat, then a layer of salmon.

  2. Continue layering until the pie is filled, then cover with puff pastry.

  3. Brush the top with egg white and bake at 300°F (150°C) until done.

Finish and serve

  1. Let cool for 30 minutes, then pour in fish broth through a hole in the top.

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. Salmon + fishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,078 recipes

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

  2. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

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

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Salmon + eggtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Raw eggs
Bind the forcemeat so it holds together when sliced.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the forcemeat.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb liquid and give the forcemeat body.
Canned salmon
Forms the flaked layers and the main flavour of the pie.
Poulette sauce
Moistens the forcemeat so it stays tender after baking.

The step that matters

Binding the forcemeat with raw eggs. Raw egg proteins set when heated, so they hold the forcemeat together. If the mixture is too wet or the eggs are poorly mixed in, the slices may crumble or the texture may turn loose.

“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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