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Boiled Salmon

A boiled salmon served with a butter‑flour sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the salmon

  1. Wash the salmon in cold water.

  2. Place the salmon in boiling salted water and boil until the flakes begin to separate.

  3. Drain the salmon.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and flour over heat until bubbling.

  2. Gradually stir in the boiling water and bring to a boil.

  3. Season the sauce with salt and pepper.

Serve

  1. Serve the sauce with the boiled salmon.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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, and its flesh flakes as it cooks.
Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, adding richness and smooth mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the sauce when cooked with butter and liquid into a smooth base.

The step that matters

Boil the salmon until the flakes begin to separate. Salmon is done when its flesh just starts to flake. Boiling much longer toughens the proteins, leaving it dry and firm rather than moist and tender.

“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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