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To Boil Salmon

A simple boiled salmon served with parsley and lobster or shrimp sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Salmon and lobster work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 313 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

To Boil Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and scale the salmon, then rinse it in water.

  2. Fill a large fish kettle with water and add a handful of coarse sea salt.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the salmon in the kettle and bring to a gentle boil, skimming as needed.

  2. Cook for about 10 minutes per pound, checking doneness by inserting a knife between the fish and the bone.

  3. Once cooked, lift the salmon out to drain and serve on a dish with a napkin underneath.

  4. Garnish with green parsley and serve with lobster or shrimp sauce.

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 + lobstertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together313 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + lobstertop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together890 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  3. 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
Provides the main body of the dish, cooked gently in simmering water until flaky.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the cooking water so the fish is lightly flavoured as it cooks.

The step that matters

Cooking the salmon at a gentle boil. A vigorous boil toughens and breaks up the delicate flesh, while gentle heat cooks it evenly and keeps it moist. Skimming removes foam that can cloud the water and mark the fish.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, lobster. 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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