Name: Escalloped Salmon
Ingredients: 1 can of salmon; ½ teaspoon salt; 2 tablespoons lemon juice; 2 tablespoons melted butter; ½ cup dried bread crumbs; Pepper to taste; 1½ cups milk; Butter for greasing

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Escalloped Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Turn the salmon into a dish, removing all skin and bones while breaking it as little as possible.
In a saucepan, make a cream sauce by combining milk, butter, flour, salt, and pepper over medium heat.
Add lemon juice to the salmon and mix well.
In a buttered baking dish, layer half of the salmon, lightly sprinkle with salt, and pour half of the cream sauce over it.
Add the remaining salmon and cover with the rest of the cream sauce.
Sprinkle the dried bread crumbs on top, alternating with the salmon and other ingredients.

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.

Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together11,466 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).
Lemon + milktop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together19,053 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, bread, pepper, milk):

Lemonthe original
Figfits about as well
Mangofits less well
Coconutfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, bread, pepper, milk. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.