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Salmon Mold

A steamed salmon cake made with flaked salmon, egg, and optional garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salmon Mold

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Drain the salmon, discard the bone and skin, and flake the flesh.

  2. Beat the egg and mix it with the salmon and other ingredients.

Steam and serve

  1. Pack the mixture into a small greased tin mold.

  2. Steam for 1 hour or until firm.

  3. Carefully turn out the mold and serve hot with Cream Sauce or Caper Sauce, or cold garnished with lemon and watercress or parsley.

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. Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Salmon + watercresstop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  3. Salmon + eggtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Salmon + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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 body and flavour of the cakes.
Egg
Binds the flaked salmon so the mixture holds together when turned out.

The step that matters

Steam until firm. Steaming gently sets the egg so the mixture firms into a shape that holds together. Too little time leaves the cakes soft and likely to fall apart when turned out of the mold.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, egg, watercress):

  1. Avocadofits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Limefits less well
  4. Pumpkinfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, egg, watercress. 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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