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To Boil Salmon

A whole salmon is boiled in salted water, served with optional cucumber, olive oil, vinegar, salt, and black pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

To Boil Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Stun the salmon with a heavy blow to the head.

  2. Make slashes on each side of the fish down to the backbone.

  3. Place the salmon in cold spring water or under a waterfall for 10 minutes.

  4. Remove the gills, open the belly, and wash the inside of the salmon.

Boil and serve

  1. Boil water with enough salt to float an egg.

  2. Immerse the salmon in boiling brine and cook for 7.5 minutes per pound.

  3. Serve the salmon with the boiling water as a sauce, and add salt and a squeeze of lemon to taste.

  4. Optionally, serve with finely sliced cucumber dressed with 3 tablespoons of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of vinegar, salt, and black 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. Cucumber + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,611 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  3. Lemon + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,922 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Cucumber + vinegartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,734 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Lemon + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

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

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; its flesh cooks through gently in the hot brine.
Salt
Seasons the brine and the finished fish, and helps the flesh hold its flavour.
Lemon
Adds bright acidity that lifts the flavour of the rich fish.

The step that matters

Immerse the salmon in boiling brine and cook for 7.5 minutes per pound. The brine must be at a full boil when the fish goes in, so the temperature recovers quickly and the flesh cooks evenly. Timing by weight matters because overcooking dries the fish and makes the flesh flake apart.

Swap the cucumber

The recipe marks cucumber as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, lemon, olive, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits about as well
  2. Cucumberthe original
  3. Tomatofits about as well
  4. Broccolifits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, lemon, olive, vinegar, 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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