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Cream of Salmon Soup

A creamy soup made with salmon, stock, milk, butter, flour, bay leaf, parsley, onion, salt, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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 ↓

Cream of Salmon Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove skin and bones from the salmon and flake the flesh finely.

Make the soup

  1. In a saucepan, combine the milk and stock, add the bay leaf, parsley, and onion, and bring to a boil.

  2. In a small bowl, rub together the butter and flour until smooth, then add to the boiling mixture to thicken.

  3. Skim out the bay leaf, parsley, and onion, then add the flaked salmon and cook for a few moments, seasoning to taste.

  4. For a smoother consistency, press the soup through a sieve after adding the fish, then reheat before serving.

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. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + white peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

Salmon
Provides the main flavour and flaked body of the soup.
Butter and flour
Form a roux that thickens the milk and stock into a creamy soup.
Milk
Adds richness and a creamy texture to the soup.
White stock or water
Forms the liquid base that the thickened soup is built on.

The step that matters

Adding the butter and flour to the boiling liquid. If the roux is not rubbed smooth, or is added without enough stirring, flour clumps form and the soup thickens unevenly. Blending the butter and flour first lets the starch disperse evenly as it heats and swells.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, milk, butter, parsley, onion, flour):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Garlicfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, milk, butter, parsley, onion, flour. 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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