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Salmon Turbot

Baked salmon with a milk and butter sauce topped with breadcrumbs.

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

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Cream the butter with the flour.

  3. Stir the butter and flour mixture into the heated milk.

  4. Add salt and pepper to the sauce.

  5. Pour the sauce over the beaten egg.

Assemble

  1. In a baking dish, layer the flaked salmon and the sauce until filled.

  2. Top with fine bread crumbs.

Bake and brown

  1. Cover and bake until it begins to bubble.

  2. Uncover and brown the top.

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

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

  3. Milk + breadtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,466 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, 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

Flaked salmon
Forms the main body and flavour of the dish.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, spoonable sauce as its starch swells with heat.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and a softer, silkier texture in the sauce.
Milk
Makes the liquid base of the sauce, which sets into a creamy layer when baked.
Beaten egg
Helps bind the mixture and sets with heat to give it structure.
Fine bread crumbs
Form the topping that browns and turns crisp in the oven.

The step that matters

Stir the butter and flour mixture into the heated milk. Flour needs to be dispersed evenly in hot liquid so its starch thickens the sauce smoothly instead of forming lumps. Stirring while adding keeps the sauce uniform before it is combined with the other layers.

“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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