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Salmon Fritters

Salmon fritters made with boiled salted salmon, mashed potatoes, cream, egg yolk, fried in lard or beef dripping, served with hard‑boiled eggs and soy‑mushroom sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and beef are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,052 recipes. Both carry sotolon, which smells curry, maple. The science ↓

Salmon Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Make the fritters

  1. Mix the pounded potatoes with cream and the beaten egg yolk.

  2. Add the small pieces of salmon and combine well.

  3. Form the mixture into small fritters.

  4. Fry the fritters in fresh lard or beef dripping until light brown.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, melt the butter in a pan.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until hot.

  3. Add the soy sauce and mushroom catsup, mixing well.

  4. Serve with hard-boiled eggs cut in quarters.

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. Potato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,787 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Potato + buttertop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

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

Salmon
Provides the main flavour and the flaky body of the fritters.
Boiled potatoes
Bind the salmon and give the fritters a soft, tender interior.
Egg yolk
Adds richness and helps bind the mixture together.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness to the potato mixture.
Butter
Forms the base of the sauce and carries its flavour.
Flour
Thickens the butter to give the sauce body.

The step that matters

Frying the fritters until light brown. Frying in hot fat browns the surface and seals it, so the fritters stay crisp outside while the moist potato and salmon inside cook through. Too low a heat leaves them greasy and soggy.

Swap the potato

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

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

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