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To Dry Salmon

This recipe describes drying a whole salmon using salt, sugar, and saltpetre.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Salmon and sugar work together. They rank in the top 35% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 931 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

To Dry Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Open the fish and remove the insides, including the roe.

  2. Scalp the fish and rub it with coarse sea salt.

  3. Hang the fish to drain for 24 to 30 hours.

Cure

  1. Mix sugar, coarse sea salt, and saltpetre together.

  2. Rub the mixture thoroughly into the salmon.

  3. Place the salmon on a dish and let it sit for 48 hours.

  4. Rub the salmon again with coarse sea salt.

  5. Let it remain until the next evening, then it will be ready to dry.

Dry and smoke

  1. Wipe the salmon thoroughly after drying.

  2. Spread it open with two sticks and hang it in a chimney where a wood fire is burning.

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. Salmon + sugartop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together931 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the fish and preserves it by slowing bacterial growth.
Sugar
Balances the saltiness and adds a mild sweetness to the cured flesh.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the colour of the fish and inhibits spoilage during curing.

The step that matters

Rubbing the cure in thoroughly. Salt and saltpetre only preserve where they reach. Uneven coverage leaves spots that spoil or cure unevenly, so the mixture should be worked into every part of the flesh.

“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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