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Boiled Salmon

Boiled Salmon is a whole salmon cooked in salted water, served with lemon slices, parsley, and drawn butter or white sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 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 ↓

Boiled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Select the head end of a good-sized salmon.

  2. Cut off the head and sew it in a piece of cloth to prevent breaking.

Cook

  1. Put the salmon in boiling salted water and cook for 15 minutes per pound.

  2. Once done, carefully remove the skin and cloth.

Serve

  1. Garnish with slices of lemon and parsley.

  2. Serve with drawn butter sauce or a white sauce with parsley and lemon.

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. Parsley + buttertop 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. Lemon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

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

  5. Salmon + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,918 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
Its protein sets with gentle heat, giving the cooked flesh its firm, flaky texture.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich flavour of the salmon and the sauce.
Drawn butter sauce
Adds fat and richness that moisten the mild, lean salmon flesh.

The step that matters

Timing the cook. Salmon turns opaque and flakes as its proteins set with heat. Cooking it past that point squeezes out moisture and leaves the flesh dry and tight, so the time per pound should be watched closely.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, lemon, 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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