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Escalloped Salmon

A baked salmon dish topped with flour, butter, pepper, salt, and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Escalloped Salmon

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.

Prepare

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

Assemble

  1. In a baking dish, layer the salmon.

  2. Sprinkle with flour, small pieces of butter, pepper, and salt.

  3. Repeat layers until the dish is full.

  4. Top with cracker crumbs.

Bake

  1. Bake in the oven for about 1 hour until heated through.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Salmon + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Flour and butter 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
Forms the main body of the dish and provides its protein and flavor.
Flour
Thickens the juices released during baking into a light sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, melting through the layers to moisten them.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, lightly browned topping during baking.

The step that matters

Bake until heated through. The salmon is already cooked, so the goal is to heat it evenly and set the sauce without drying it out. Baking too long can make the fish dry and tough, while too short a bake leaves the center cold and the flour raw-tasting.

“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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