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An Excellent Dish of Dried Salmon

A casserole of dried salmon, boiled eggs, cream, butter, flour, 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

Prepare the filling

  1. Pull the dried salmon into flakes.

  2. In a bowl, combine the salmon flakes, chopped eggs, thin cream, and butter rubbed with flour.

  3. Stir the mixture until boiling hot.

Assemble and serve

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

  2. Pour the salmon 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 the flaked body of the filling.
Eggs
Chopped hard-boiled eggs add richness and a soft, tender texture to the filling.
Thin cream
Adds moisture and richness so the filling stays creamy when heated.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and rubbed with flour it helps thicken the mixture.
Flour
Rubbed into the butter, it helps thicken the cream as the mixture heats.
Mashed potatoes
Forms a soft border that holds the salmon filling in the dish.

The step that matters

Stir the mixture until boiling hot. Flour-thickened cream needs to be heated enough for the starch to swell and thicken; if it is stirred too little, the filling stays thin and watery.

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.

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