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Salmon with Cream Dressing

A toasted bread topped with canned salmon and a creamy dressing made from milk, flour, butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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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 ↓

Salmon with Cream Dressing

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Heat the canned salmon.

  2. Season it with salt and pepper.

Make the dressing

  1. In a saucepan, heat the milk.

  2. Stir in the flour and butter until thickened.

  3. Season the dressing with salt and pepper.

Assemble and serve

  1. Place the salmon on thin slices of buttered toast.

  2. Pour it over the salmon on toast.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Bread + milktop 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. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 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

Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the toast and helps thicken the dressing with flour.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, sauce-like dressing.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the cream dressing.
Salmon
Provides the main protein and savoury flavour of the dish.

The step that matters

Stir in the flour and butter until thickened. Flour must be fully incorporated into warm milk and cooked while stirring, or it forms lumps and the dressing stays pasty instead of smooth and thick.

“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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