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Boiled Salmon

Boiled salmon is cooked in water with salt, pepper, and served with cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Salmon and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,401 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Boiled Salmon

Oven, in the book's wordsA good hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the salmon

  1. Wrap the salmon in a clean cloth.

  2. Place it in a pan and cover with water.

  3. Add coarse sea salt and boil for about 30 minutes.

  4. Carefully remove the salmon without breaking it.

Serve

  1. Season with pepper and serve with cream.

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 + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,401 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Pepper + creamtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together21,449 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  3. Salmon + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,446 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Pepper and cream barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 21,449 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
Provides the main protein, which sets as it cooks into firm, flaky flesh.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, fatty texture to the finished dish.

The step that matters

Carefully remove the salmon without breaking it. Cooked salmon flesh is delicate and flakes easily as its proteins set. Lifting it gently and supporting it whole, such as with the cloth, helps keep the fish intact.

“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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