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Boiled Salmon

A boiled salmon served with butter‑parsley sauce and a pickled liquid garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Boiled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the salmon

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

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

  3. Carefully unwrap and place on a hot dish.

Make the butter sauce

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

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

Garnish and pickle

  1. Garnish with parsley and sliced eggs.

  2. For the pickle, combine the boiling liquid, vinegar, pepper, and salt in a pot.

  3. Add parsley and thyme, then boil for a few minutes.

  4. Let it cool, then pour over the fish.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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

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

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Is the main protein that cooks gently in salted water until flaky.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and moisture to the fish and carries the lemon and parsley flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter sauce.
Vinegar
Provides acidity in the pickle that sharpens the flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Boil in salted water for 15 minutes per pound. Boiling too hard or too long can toughen and dry the salmon, while gentle simmering cooks the flesh evenly and keeps it moist and tender.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymethe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

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