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Fresh Salmon Boiled

Boiled fresh salmon seasoned with coarse sea salt and garnished with horseradish, parsley, and boiled egg rings.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Horseradish and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 562 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Fresh Salmon Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the salmon

  1. Scale and clean the salmon, cutting open only as necessary.

  2. Place the salmon in a kettle of cold water with the salt.

  3. Bring to a slow boil and cook for about 15 minutes per pound. Skim the surface as needed.

Drain and serve

  1. Once cooked, carefully lift the salmon into a napkin to absorb moisture and wrap it tightly.

  2. Serve on a hot dish, garnished with horseradish, curled parsley, or boiled egg rings.

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. Horseradish + parsleytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together562 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Salmon + eggtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Salmon + horseradishtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together250 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  4. Parsley + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Salmon + parsleytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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 gently in simmering water until opaque and flaky.
Sea salt
Seasons the cooking water so the fish is seasoned from the outside in.

The step that matters

Bring to a slow boil, not a hard boil. Gentle simmering cooks the fish evenly and keeps the flesh moist and tender. A rolling boil toughens the outer layers and can break the fish apart before the center is cooked through.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Tarragonfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, horseradish, egg. 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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