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Fresh Salmon Boiled

Boiled fresh salmon seasoned with salt, served with egg sauce or butter and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Fresh Salmon Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Wash the salmon carefully and rub the incision with coarse sea salt.

  2. Tie the salmon in a cloth.

Cook the salmon

  1. Boil the salmon in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for about 40 minutes.

  2. Turn the salmon over halfway through cooking.

Make the vinegar relish

  1. Mix 1 cup of vinegar with 2 tablespoons of the cooking liquid.

  2. Heat the mixture until scalding.

  3. Pour the mixture over the salmon for a breakfast relish.

Serve

  1. Serve with egg sauce or drawn butter and parsley.

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. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  5. Salmon + parsleytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh salmon
Forms the main body of the dish, turning firm and opaque as its proteins set with heat.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the relish poured over the salmon.
Cooking liquid from boiled salmon
Carries savoury salmon flavour into the relish and keeps it moist.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the drawn butter served alongside the salmon.

The step that matters

Cook in a slow oven. Gentle, moderate heat cooks the salmon evenly and keeps its flesh moist and tender. High heat tightens the proteins quickly, leaving the fish dry and firm.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, vinegar, butter. 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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