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Boiled Salmon

A boiled salmon steak served with parsley, olives, and Worcestershire sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and olive match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,649 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Boiled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the salmon

  1. Tie the salmon steak in a cloth and place it on a flat tin with holes.

  2. Submerge in lukewarm salted water.

  3. Boil slowly for 20 minutes.

Serve

  1. Remove from water and transfer to a hot platter.

  2. Garnish with curled parsley and pickled olives.

  3. Serve with Worcestershire sauce.

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 + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Salmon + olivetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,942 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans,trans-2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  3. Salmon + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Olive + saucetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,568 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Parsley + saucetop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,693 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon steak
Forms the main body of the dish and cooks through gently in the simmering water.
Salt
Seasons the poaching water so the fish is flavoured as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boil slowly for 20 minutes. A slow simmer cooks the salmon gently so the proteins set without tightening and drying out. A rolling boil toughens the flesh and can break the steak apart.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, olive, sauce. 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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