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Crimped Salmon

A method of preparing salmon by crimping, boiling, and serving with lemon or vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Crimped Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Make a transverse cut just below the gills of the salmon and crimp it by cutting to the bone on each side.

  2. Hold the fish by the tail to let it bleed.

  3. Place the fish in cool spring water for 10 minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Boil water with salt in a pot until it is boiling.

  2. Add the thickest pieces of salmon first, leaving the head out, and allow the water to recover heat between additions.

  3. Serve with a spoonful of the boiling water, lemon juice or vinegar, and pepper.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Salmon + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks in the hot water.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the cooking water so the fish is lightly flavoured as it poaches.
Lemon juice or vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Allow the water to recover heat between additions. Adding cold fish drops the water temperature. If it does not return to a boil before the next pieces go in, the fish cooks unevenly and may take longer to set through.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, pepper. 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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