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To Boil Fresh Salmon

A method for boiling fresh salmon in salted water and serving with butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Salmon and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,481 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

To Boil Fresh Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Bring 4 quarts of water to a boil in a kettle.

  2. Add a handful of coarse sea salt to the boiling water.

Cook the salmon

  1. Plunge the fresh salmon into the boiling water.

  2. Remove any scum that rises to the surface.

  3. Boil for 15 minutes for each pound of fish.

Serve

  1. Serve with drawn butter or cover with sweet butter.

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 + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 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

Fresh salmon
The main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks in the water.
Sweet butter
Adds richness and a silky fat to the fish when served drawn or spooned over it.

The step that matters

Boil for 15 minutes for each pound of fish. Cooking time depends on the weight of the fish, so a miscalculated time can leave the salmon undercooked in the center or dry and overcooked on the outside. Keep the water at a steady boil and check the fish for flakiness near the end.

“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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