Skip to main content
Main

Pickled Salmon

A salmon dish cured in vinegar, spices, and a lemon‑egg sauce, finished with ginger, pepper, and sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Pickled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Soak the salmon in water for 24 hours, changing the water occasionally.

  2. Put the salmon in boiling water with a little vinegar until cooked, then let it cool.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, stew the chopped onion in sweet oil until well done.

  2. Combine the egg yolks, lemon juice, and flour in a bowl and beat well.

  3. Pour the egg mixture over the fish when nearly done.

  4. Add ginger, pepper, and coarse sea salt to taste, and stew for 3‑4 minutes.

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. Lemon + gingertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,154 recipes

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

  3. Ginger + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,800 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + gingertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together7,595 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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 that becomes the dish once cooked and dressed.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set with gentle heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the dish and balances the richness of the yolks and oil.
Sweet oil
Carries the flavour of the cooked onion and adds richness to the sauce.
Flour
Stabilises the egg mixture so it thickens smoothly rather than curdling.

The step that matters

Pour the egg mixture over the fish when nearly done.. Egg yolks thicken and can scramble if they get too hot or are added to a boiling liquid. Adding them near the end, off a hard boil, and beating well keeps the sauce smooth.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, vinegar, egg, lemon, flour, ginger, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, vinegar, egg, lemon, flour, ginger, 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesSalmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesCanned SalmonCanned Salmon14 recipes