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An Excellent Dish of Dried Salmon

A sauce of dried salmon flakes, boiled eggs, cream, butter, and flour served over mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Mace and clove are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,400 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

An Excellent Dish of Dried Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. In a saucepan, combine the salmon flakes, chopped eggs, cream, and butter mixed with flour.

  2. Skim the mixture and stir until it is boiling hot.

Serve

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

  2. Pour the hot 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. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

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

  5. Potato + clovetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,297 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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 flaky texture of the dish.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and richness, thickening the mixture as they hold together.
Thin cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the mixture a smooth, creamy texture.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the mixture.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream so the mixture becomes a cohesive sauce.

The step that matters

Stir until boiling hot. Flour needs to reach boiling to fully thicken the cream and butter. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and starchy-tasting, while overheating can make the cream separate.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

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