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Salmon Loaf

Salmon loaf is a steamed fish cake made with salmon, eggs, butter, breadcrumbs, and seasonings, served with a milk‑cornstarch sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Salmon Loaf

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the loaf

  1. Mash the salmon in a bowl or with a mortar until fine.

  2. Add melted butter to the salmon until it forms a smooth paste.

  3. In a separate bowl, mix the beaten eggs with bread crumbs and season with salt, pepper, and parsley.

  4. Combine the salmon mixture with the egg and bread crumb mixture.

Steam the loaf

  1. Transfer the mixture to a buttered pudding mold and steam for 1 hour.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, heat the milk to boiling and thicken with corn starch.

  2. Add the liquor from the canned fish or double the quantity of butter, along with 1 tablespoon of butter, 1 raw egg, ketchup, mace, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Carefully add the raw egg last and boil the sauce for 1 minute.

  4. Once the loaf is turned out of the mold, pour the sauce over it and slice at the table.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Milk + corntop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Bread + milktop 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

Salmon
Provides the main body and flavor of the loaf.
Eggs
Bind the mixture and set when steamed, holding the loaf together.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the loaf a softer, tender body.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the salmon paste smooth.
Milk
Forms the base of the sauce, which thickens with corn starch.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk sauce into a smooth, pourable consistency.

The step that matters

Carefully add the raw egg last and boil the sauce for 1 minute. Adding a raw egg to hot liquid can scramble it if added too fast. Adding it last and stirring gently, then briefly boiling, cooks the egg smoothly into the sauce and helps it thicken.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Nutmegfits about as well
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Cinnamonfits about as well
  4. Dillfits less well

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