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Salmon Turbot

A steamed salmon dish with breadcrumbs, butter, eggs, and a cream sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Turbot

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat your steamer.

  2. In a bowl, combine the salmon, melted butter, bread crumbs, salt, pepper, and beaten eggs. Stir well and pour the mixture into a greased pan.

Steam and make the sauce

  1. Steam for 1 hour.

  2. For the sauce, bring the cream or milk to a boil. Once boiling, thicken with flour mixed with a little oil.

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. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  4. Bread + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Eggs
Bind the mixture and set into a firm, sliceable custard-like texture when steamed.
Bread crumbs
Absorb liquid and add body so the salmon mixture holds together.
Salmon
Forms the main body of the dish and provides its flavor.
Melted butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, more tender texture.
Cream or milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding richness and smoothness.
Flour
Thickens the hot cream or milk into a smooth sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour. Flour mixed with a little oil first (a slurry or roux) keeps it from clumping when added to the hot liquid. Stirring as it heats lets the starch swell evenly into a smooth 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.

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