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Salmon in Marinade

Salmon in Marinade is a dish of salmon simmered in a vinegar-based broth with onions, turnip, carrot, celery, parsley, bay leaves, mace, peppercorns, and salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Salmon in Marinade

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the marinade

  1. In a stewpan, melt the butter and sauté the onions, turnip, carrot, celery, parsley, and bay leaves for 10 minutes over medium heat.

  2. Add the vinegar, mace, peppercorns, and salt, and let it simmer.

  3. Pour in the water and bring to a gentle simmer.

Poach and cool

  1. Add the salmon and cook gently for about 30 minutes.

  2. Remove from heat and let the salmon cool in the marinade 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. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

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

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Turnip + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Is the main protein, cooked gently so it becomes tender and flakes without drying out.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the marinade and the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour from the sautéed vegetables into the marinade.
Onions
Build a sweet, savoury base of flavour for the marinade.

The step that matters

Keep the simmer gentle when adding the salmon. At a hard boil the outside of the fish toughens and breaks apart before the centre is evenly cooked. A gentle simmer cooks the salmon evenly and keeps it moist and tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, turnip, carrot, celery, parsley, butter, vinegar):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, turnip, carrot, celery, parsley, butter, vinegar. 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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