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Dried Salmon

A salmon dish with eggs, cream, butter, flour, and mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Dried Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Cut the salmon into layers.

  2. Combine the salmon and chopped hard-boiled eggs in a saucepan.

Make the sauce

  1. Add the thin cream and butter mixed with flour.

  2. Skim the mixture and stir until it is boiling hot.

Serve

  1. Form a wall of mashed potatoes around the inner edge of a dish.

  2. Pour the salmon mixture into the center of the dish.

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. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  4. Salmon + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Flour + potatotop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,355 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

Salmon
Forms the main body of the dish and supplies its flavour.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add body and a soft, rich texture to the mixture.
Thin cream
Adds moisture and richness, creating a smooth sauce around the salmon.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and with flour helps thicken the sauce.
Flour
Thickens the butter and cream into a smoother, more cohesive sauce.
Mashed potatoes
Form a border that holds the salmon mixture in the dish.

The step that matters

Stir the butter and flour into the cream. Flour mixed with butter must be fully combined and heated so it thickens the cream evenly. If it is added in clumps or not heated enough, the sauce can stay lumpy or taste raw from the flour.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, egg, cream, butter, flour):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Asparagusfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, egg, cream, butter, flour. 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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