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An Excellent Dish of Dried Salmon

A dish of dried salmon flakes served in a cream sauce with chopped hard‑boiled eggs and mashed potatoes.

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

An Excellent Dish of Dried Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the thick cream and butter mixed with flour.

  2. Skim the mixture and heat until boiling hot.

Assemble and serve

  1. In a serving dish, create a wall of mashed potatoes around the inner edge.

  2. Pour the hot cream mixture over the salmon flakes and chopped eggs.

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. Cream + salmontop 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 protein and savory flavor of the dish.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety texture to the sauce.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and carries flavor through the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce as its starch swells when heated with the liquid.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and soft, creamy texture among the salmon flakes.
Mashed potatoes
Form a starchy border that holds the dish and absorbs some sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the sauce until fully boiling. Flour must be heated thoroughly in the cream and butter for its starch to swell and thicken the sauce, and to lose its raw floury taste. Stopping early leaves the sauce thin and pasty.

Swap the potato

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

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

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