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Steamed Salmon

A steamed salmon dish with lemon, cream, and optional garnish of hard boiled eggs, lemon slices, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Steamed Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the salmon into nice pieces.

  2. Season with salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  3. Add the cream and beat until smooth.

Steam and serve

  1. Steam in a well-greased mold for 45 minutes.

  2. Garnish with slices of hard boiled eggs, lemon, and parsley.

  3. Serve with mashed potatoes or potato balls and Hollandaise sauce.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 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
Forms the body of the dish and provides its main flavour and texture.
Cream
Adds moisture and richness, giving the steamed mixture a softer, smoother texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the salmon.

The step that matters

Beat the cream until smooth. Beating evenly distributes the cream through the salmon so the steamed mixture sets with a uniform, tender texture rather than dense or uneven patches.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, pepper, lemon, cream, egg, parsley, sauce):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, pepper, lemon, cream, egg, parsley, sauce. 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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