Name: Salmon Pie
Ingredients: 1 lb cold boiled salmon or 1 small tin; 1½ cups velouté sauce; 2 hard boiled eggs; 1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley; a few browned bread crumbs; juice of 1 small lemon; pepper; coarse sea salt

Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Salmon Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Assemble the pie

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Break the salmon into small pieces and place in a pie dish.
Season with lemon juice, pepper, and coarse sea salt.
Pour the velouté sauce over the salmon.
Sprinkle with browned bread crumbs and bake for 5 minutes.

Prepare the garnish

Separate the egg whites and yolks.
Rub the yolks through a coarse sieve and chop the whites.

Decorate and serve

Use the yolks, whites, and parsley to decorate the pie.
Serve hot or cold.

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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together22,662 recipes

Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).
Parsley + breadtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,588 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon: Forms the main body of the pie, providing flaky texture and savoury flavour.
Velouté sauce: Adds moisture and a creamy binding that keeps the salmon from drying out.
Browned bread crumbs: Adds a crisp, golden top through browning.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich fish and sauce.

“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.