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How to Cook Salmon

A method of cooking salmon by brining, scalding, cooling, reheating, and frying leftovers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Salmon and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 27% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,675 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

How to Cook Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Make 2-inch wide and 1-inch deep incisions between the head and tail of the salmon.

  2. Soak the salmon in cold water for 1 hour.

  3. Place the salmon in a fish kettle.

  4. Cover the fish kettle with cold water.

  5. Add ½ cup of coarse sea salt to the water.

  6. Add enough vinegar to make the water slightly acidic.

  7. Heat the water until scalding hot but not boiling.

  8. Remove the water from heat.

  9. Pour the hot water into a pan.

  10. Place the salmon in a strainer over the pan to cool.

Cook and cool

  1. Let the salmon cool in the hot water until the next day.

  2. Reheat the salmon in the same water until warmed through.

  3. Ensure the salmon does not boil during reheating.

Use leftovers

  1. Sprinkle leftover salmon with salt.

  2. Fry the salted salmon in batter.

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. Salmon + vinegartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
The main protein; gentle poaching in hot water keeps its flesh moist and tender.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the fish and firms its flesh as it soaks in the brine.
Vinegar
Makes the poaching water slightly acidic, which helps keep the flesh firm and pale.

The step that matters

Reheat without boiling. Boiling water toughens and breaks up salmon flesh as proteins contract hard. Keeping the water just below boiling lets the fish warm through gently and stay moist and tender.

“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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