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Creamed Salmon

A baked salmon dish with bread crumbs and a creamy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter 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 ↓

Creamed 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 the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Remove bones and skin from the salmon, then break it into small pieces with a fork.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter over medium heat.

  2. Add the milk and bring to a boil.

  3. Stir in the corn starch mixed with a little milk until smooth.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a baking dish and layer the bread crumbs, salmon, and sauce, finishing with a layer of crumbs on top.

  2. Bake until golden brown.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Butter + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,345 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Canned salmon
Forms the main body of the dish, providing protein and flaky texture.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the sauce and form a structured layer that holds the dish together.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce that carries the salmon and crumbs.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the sauce and helps the top brown.
Corn starch
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it heats.

The step that matters

Stir in the corn starch mixture until smooth. Cornstarch must be mixed with cold liquid first and then stirred into hot milk, or it clumps. Starch granules thicken the sauce only once they swell in heat, so the sauce should be stirred while it heats and thickens.

Swap the white pepper

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, bread, milk, butter, 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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