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Pickle Salmon

A salmon preserved by boiling in a strong salt brine, then packed and covered in a vinegar and brine mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and fennel work together. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 505 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Pickle Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the brine

  1. Clean the fish without scraping off the scales and cut it into pieces about eight inches long.

  2. Make a strong brine by mixing 2 pounds of coarse sea salt with 2 quarts of water and ¼ pint of vinegar.

  3. Boil the brine slowly, just enough to cook the fish as you would for eating hot.

  4. Drain the brine and let it cool.

Pickle and serve

  1. Pack the fish pieces tightly in a kit or small tub.

  2. Fill the tub with equal parts of best vinegar and the cooled brine.

  3. Let it sit for a day or two, then refill as needed.

  4. Serve with a garnish of fresh fennel.

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. Vinegar + fenneltop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse sea salt
Draws water out of the fish and seasons it, helping preserve the flesh in the brine.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the brine and filling, helping to preserve and sharpen the flavour of the fish.
Best vinegar
Makes up half the filling, giving the fish its main sour, pickled flavour.

The step that matters

Boil the brine slowly. Boiling only gently cooks the fish through without breaking up its flesh. Too vigorous a boil can toughen or fall apart the pieces.

“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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