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Dried or Smoked Salmon

A method of curing salmon with saltpetre, sea salt, and sugar, then drying or smoking it.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Salmon and sugar work together. They rank in the top 35% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 931 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

Dried or Smoked Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Cut the fish down the back, remove the entrails and roe, and scale it.

  2. Rub the outside and inside with coarse sea salt.

  3. Hang the salmon to drain for 24 hours.

Cure

  1. Mix saltpetre, coarse sea salt, and brown sugar together.

  2. Rub the salmon thoroughly with the mixture.

  3. Place the salmon on a large dish for 2 days.

  4. Rub the salmon with more coarse sea salt.

  5. Wait 24 hours for the salmon to dry.

  6. Wipe the salmon well.

Smoke

  1. Stretch the salmon open with two sticks.

  2. Hang the salmon in a chimney with a smoldering wood fire, a smokehouse, or in a dry, cool place.

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 + sugartop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together931 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
The main protein; its firm flesh holds up through salting, drying and smoking.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the fish and keeps its color during curing.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the fish, slowing spoilage during curing.
Coarse brown sugar
Balances the salt with sweetness and adds a little flavor to the cure.

The step that matters

Rub the salmon thoroughly with the cure. Salt and cure must reach all the flesh evenly. Thin or missed areas can spoil or cure unevenly, while salt draws out moisture that would otherwise encourage bacterial growth.

“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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