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Pickled Salmon

A preserved salmon prepared by boiling, seasoning, and brining in a vinegar mixture.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Pickled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Boil the salmon until cooked through.

  2. Remove all bones carefully without breaking the fish.

  3. Season the salmon with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

Pickle

  1. In a pot, combine vinegar, allspice, cloves, black pepper, and red pepper, then bring to a boil.

  2. Add the leaves of mace to the vinegar mixture.

  3. Pour the hot mixture over the salmon and cover tightly.

  4. Let it sit; it will be ready to eat by evening.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Main protein; cooking sets its flesh, and it is pickled to become firm and flavorful.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that flavors the fish and firms its texture during pickling.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavor to the pickling liquid.

The step that matters

Remove all bones carefully without breaking the fish. Cooked salmon flakes apart easily because its muscle fibers separate with heat. Working gently keeps the pieces intact and prevents the flesh from breaking up in the pickling liquid.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, pepper, vinegar, allspice, clove. 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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