Skip to main content
Main

Dried Salmon

A casserole of dried salmon, eggs, cream, butter, flour, and mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Cream and butter 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 ↓

Dried Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove gills from the dried salmon and pull it into flakes.

  2. Boil the eggs hard and chop them coarsely.

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine the flakes of salmon, chopped eggs, and ½ pint of thin cream.

  2. Rub 2 ounces of butter with 1 teaspoon of flour and add to the mixture.

  3. Skim and stir until boiling hot.

Assemble

  1. Form a wall of mashed potatoes around the inner edge of a dish.

  2. Pour the salmon and egg mixture into the center of the dish.

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. Cream + buttertop 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
Provides the main flavour and flaked body of the filling.
Eggs
Set when cooked and give the filling a firm, sliced texture.
Thin cream
Adds moisture and richness so the filling stays creamy when heated.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, rounding the flavour of the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the cream mixture so it holds together rather than running thin.
Mashed potatoes
Form a soft starchy wall that holds the filling in the dish.

The step that matters

Stirring the filling until boiling hot. Flour thickens the cream only when it reaches a boil and is stirred, so stopping early leaves the sauce thin and floury-tasting. Stirring also prevents scorching on the saucepan base.

Swap the potato

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

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

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

You might also like

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesSalmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipes