Skip to main content
Main

Molded Salmon

A salmon dish molded with mustard, salt, sugar, egg yolks, cream, vinegar, gelatin, served on lettuce with cucumber sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and lettuce match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,356 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Molded Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Remove skin and bones from the salmon and break it into small pieces.

Make the custard

  1. In a bowl, mix mustard, salt, sugar, egg yolks, thin cream, and vinegar.

  2. Cook the mixture over simmering water until it thickens like custard.

  3. Remove the mixture from heat.

  4. Add soaked Knox gelatin to the mixture.

  5. Strain the mixture over the salmon.

  6. Mix thoroughly and pour into a mold that has been dipped in cold water.

Set and serve

  1. Set the mold in a cold place until firm.

  2. To serve, turn the mold onto a bed of lettuce and accompany with cucumber sauce.

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. Mustard + lettucetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,356 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Cream + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,628 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Sugar + gelatintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,778 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the cream and vinegar mixture into a custard as they cook and set.
Knox gelatin
Sets the mixture so it holds its shape when turned out of the mold.
Salmon
Forms the main body of the molded dish.
Thin cream
Adds richness and softens the sharpness of the vinegar in the custard.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the custard and salmon.

The step that matters

Cook the mixture over simmering water until it thickens like custard. Egg yolks thicken when heated gently; too much heat scrambles them into grainy curds, so the custard must be cooked slowly over simmering water and stirred.

Swap the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, mustard, sugar, egg, cream, vinegar, gelatin):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Cucumberfits about as well
  3. Lettucethe original
  4. Chivefits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, mustard, sugar, egg, cream, vinegar, gelatin. 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.

You might also like

Salmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesCanned SalmonCanned Salmon14 recipesSmoked SalmonSmoked Salmon14 recipes