Name: Poached Egg with Salmon
Ingredients: Bread, 1 inch thick; Canned salmon, flaked; Cream sauce, 1 cup; Melted butter; Parsley, for garnish; Lemon, sliced, for garnish

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 ↓

Poached Egg with 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 the bread

Cut 1-inch thick bread rounds and hollow them to create cases.
Brush the bread cases with melted butter and bake at 400°F (200°C) until browned.

Assemble and serve

Heat the flaked canned salmon in the cream sauce.
Fill each bread case with the salmon mixture.
Top each with a poached egg and garnish with parsley and sliced lemon.

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).
Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together41,516 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Cream + saucetop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,787 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Salmon + creamtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,401 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread: Forms the crisp, hollow case that holds the filling.
Canned salmon: Provides the main protein and savory flavor of the filling.
Cream sauce: Adds moisture and richness, binding the salmon into a creamy filling.
Melted butter: Adds fat that helps the bread brown and crisp in the oven.

The step that matters

Baking the bread cases until browned. Baking until browned dries and crisps the bread so it holds the creamy filling without going soggy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, salmon, cream, sauce, butter, parsley):

Avocadofits about as well
Lemonthe original
Coconutfits less well
Figfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, salmon, cream, sauce, butter, parsley. 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.