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Salmon Cutlets

Salmon cutlets are breaded, pan‑fried pieces made from cooked salmon mixed with a butter‑flour‑milk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Salmon Cutlets

Ingredients

Directions

Make the panada

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan.

  2. Add the flour and stir until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the milk, stirring and boiling until the mixture leaves the bottom and sides of the pan clean.

  4. Stir in the salt, pepper, and nutmeg, then mix well.

  5. Turn the mixture onto a plate to cool.

Shape and fry

  1. Once cool, shape into cutlets.

  2. Brush each cutlet with beaten egg and cover with bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in boiling fat until golden brown, then drain.

Serve

  1. Serve with a piece of parsley stalk in each cutlet to resemble a bone, or with small pieces of macaroni.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Flour + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,623 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked salmon
Provides the main filling and flavour of the cutlets.
Butter
Enriches the flour base and adds richness to the panada.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a stiff panada that holds the cutlets together.
Milk
Forms the liquid of the panada, adding moisture and softness.
Egg
Binds the coating so the bread crumbs adhere and the crust sets when fried.

The step that matters

Cook the panada until it leaves the pan clean. Boiling the flour and milk until the mixture pulls away from the pan gelatinises the starch enough to make a stiff paste. If it is undercooked, the mixture stays loose and the cutlets will fall apart when shaped or fried.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Nutmegthe original
  2. Parsleyfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Cinnamonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, flour, milk, pepper, egg, bread. 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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