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Boiled Salmon

A boiled salmon served with lemon slices, shrimp or lobster sauce, and optional dressed cucumber.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,067 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scale, empty, and wash the salmon thoroughly, removing any blood.

Cook

  1. In a large pot, bring the water and salt to a boil, skimming off any scum.

  2. Add the salmon to the warm water and boil gently until fully cooked.

  3. Remove the salmon from the pot and let it drain on a fish plate.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot folded fish napkin, garnished with lemon slices.

  2. Accompany with shrimp or lobster sauce and dressed cucumber if in season.

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. Lemon + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

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

  2. Salmon + cucumbertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

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

  3. Salmon + shrimptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together819 recipes

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

  4. Shrimp + cucumbertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together386 recipes

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

  5. Lemon + shrimptop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Is the main protein, cooked through gently in the salted water until flaky.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the poaching water so the fish is flavoured as it cooks.

The step that matters

Boil gently until fully cooked. A rolling boil toughens and breaks up the fish, while gentle simmering cooks it evenly and keeps the flesh moist and tender.

Swap the cucumber

The recipe marks cucumber as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, lemon, shrimp):

  1. Asparagusfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Cucumberthe original
  4. Okrafits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, lemon, shrimp. 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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