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Pickled Salmon

Pickled salmon prepared by boiling in water, vinegar, salt, pepper, mace, and bay leaves, then packed in pickling liquid.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Vinegar and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pickled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Scald, clean, split, and cut the salmon into pieces.

  2. Lay the salmon pieces in a kettle and cover with equal parts water and vinegar.

  3. Add salt, pepper, mace, and bay leaves.

Cook and pickle

  1. Boil the salmon until cooked, then drain and lay it on a cloth.

  2. Repeat the boiling process with remaining salmon pieces.

  3. Once all salmon is cold, pack it tightly and cover with the pickling liquid.

  4. Place a heavy object on the fish to keep it submerged in the pickle.

  5. Occasionally pour off and scald the pickle, then cover the fish tightly to keep it from air.

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. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + macetop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Vinegar + macetop 25% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,415 recipes
  4. Salmon + macetop 26% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together550 recipes
  5. Salmon + vinegartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

Pepper and mace barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, becoming firm and flaky when boiled and then pickled.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the fish and gives it a sharp, tangy flavor.
Bay leaves
Adds a subtle aromatic herbal note to the pickling liquid.
Mace
Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Keeping the fish submerged and sealed. Fish left exposed to air at the surface can spoil or develop off flavors. Keeping every piece under the acidic pickling liquid and covering it tightly limits contact with air and microbes.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, 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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