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Salmon Potted

A spread made from mashed salmon, anchovy paste, butter, and Nepaul pepper, served hot on buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Salmon and anchovy work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 535 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Salmon Potted

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mash the remains of the salmon with enough anchovy paste and Nepaul pepper to flavor the mixture.

  2. Add a little butter and mix until smooth.

  3. Spread the mixture on rounds of buttered toast.

  4. Serve hot and quickly.

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 + anchovytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together535 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Anchovy + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

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

  4. Anchovy + peppertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Provides the main body and flavor of the spread.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the mixture turn smooth and spreadable.
Anchovy paste
Adds a salty, savory depth that enhances the fish flavor.

The step that matters

Mix until smooth. Mashing the fish thoroughly with the butter breaks it into fine particles and emulsifies the fat, giving a spreadable texture rather than a lumpy one.

“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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