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Boiled Salmon

A whole salmon is gently boiled and served with cucumbers, shrimp or lobster sauce, parsley, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare

  1. Clean the salmon carefully, ensuring no blood remains inside.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil the salmon gently in water with some coarse sea salt.

  2. Cover the pot; a large thick fish will require about 8 minutes to cook.

  3. Remove the salmon from the water as soon as it is done.

  4. Serve with dressed cucumbers, shrimp or lobster sauce, and garnish with parsley and cut lemon.

  5. Optionally, squeeze a little lemon juice over the fish 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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Salmon + cucumbertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

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

  5. Salmon + shrimptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together819 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

Salmon
Forms the main body of the dish, providing the protein that sets and flakes when cooked.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the poaching water so the fish is flavoured from the outside in.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Remove the salmon from the water as soon as it is done. Fish continues to cook from residual heat after leaving the water. Leaving it in too long can make the flesh dry and cause it to fall apart.

Swap the cucumber

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, shrimp, parsley, lemon):

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, shrimp, parsley, lemon. 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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