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Salmon Wiggle

A creamy salmon and pea casserole thickened with cornstarch, served hot with saltines.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Salmon Wiggle

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. Dissolve the cornstarch in a little milk and add it to the scalded milk to thicken.

Assemble and serve

  1. Stir in the canned peas and cook for a few minutes.

  2. Add the flaked canned salmon, butter, salt, and pepper.

  3. Serve hot with saltines.

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

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

  2. Peas + salmontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together375 recipes

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

  3. Peas + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,331 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Milk + peastop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,309 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

  5. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Milk
Forms the liquid base of the creamy sauce once scalded and thickened.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth sauce as it heats.
Canned peas
Add sweetness and soft texture to the casserole.
Canned salmon
Provides the main protein and flaky texture in the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth mouthfeel to the sauce.

The step that matters

Dissolve the cornstarch fully before adding it. Cornstarch clumps if added undissolved to hot liquid. Mixing it into a little cold milk first lets the starch disperse evenly, so when the mixture heats, starch granules swell and thicken the sauce smoothly instead of forming lumps.

“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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