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Boiled Salmon, Soy Sauce

A boiled salmon served with a sauce of fish liquid, egg yolks, lemon juice, soy sauce, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and garlic match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 29,058 recipes. Both carry furaneol, which smells caramel, strawberry. The science ↓

Boiled Salmon, Soy Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the salmon

  1. Combine water and white wine in a pot.

  2. Add salmon, butter, salt, pepper, parsley, onion, and garlic.

  3. Cover with buttered paper.

  4. Simmer gently for 45 minutes.

  5. Drain the salmon.

  6. Place it on a folded napkin on a dish.

Make the sauce

  1. Mix the fish liquid with egg yolks. Press the mixture through a napkin.

  2. Add lemon juice, soy sauce, and butter. Mix well.

  3. Serve with the salmon.

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. Onion + garlictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together29,058 recipes

    Shared aroma: furaneol (caramel, strawberry).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + garlictop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,308 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Parsley + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

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 and is cooked gently in the poaching liquid.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the fish liquid and butter to thicken the sauce into a smooth, rich texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that gives the sauce a silky mouthfeel.
Soy sauce
Adds salty, savory depth to the sauce.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Mix the fish liquid with egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated and emulsified with fat. Adding the butter and lemon juice while the mixture is warm and whisking well helps keep the sauce smooth rather than separated or scrambled.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, white wine, butter, pepper, parsley, onion, garlic):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, white wine, butter, pepper, parsley, onion, garlic. 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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