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Boiled Salmon

A salmon fillet boiled in salted water, served with a butter‑parsley‑lemon sauce and garnished with parsley and sliced eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Boiled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Poach

  1. Sew the salmon in a mosquito-net bag.

  2. Boil in salted water for 15 minutes per pound.

  3. Carefully unwrap the salmon and place it on a hot dish.

Sauce and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the drawn butter with minced parsley and lemon juice.

  2. Pour half of the butter mixture over the salmon and serve the rest in a separate dish.

  3. Garnish with parsley and sliced eggs.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Salmon + eggtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in boiling water until tender.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and moisture, coating the fish and balancing the lean flesh.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the butter and cuts its richness.

The step that matters

Boiling the salmon in its bag. Boiling for too long at a rolling boil can toughen and dry the delicate flesh. Keep the water simmering and time by weight, so the fish cooks through gently and stays moist.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, lemon, egg. 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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