Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Salmon

A whole salmon boiled in salted water, served with parsley and lobster or shrimp sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Boiled Salmon

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

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

  1. Gently place the salmon in the kettle and bring to a boil, skimming the surface.

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

  3. Once cooked, lift the salmon out and let it drain.

Serve

  1. Serve on a dish with a fish plate, garnished with green parsley and 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
Forms the main body of the dish and is the protein that sets as it cooks.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the cooking water so the fish is flavoured as it poaches.

The step that matters

Cooking the salmon in simmering water. Salmon proteins set and turn opaque as they heat. Boiling vigorously can break the flesh apart, so keeping the water gently at a simmer helps the fish stay whole and moist. Checking doneness with a knife near the bone prevents overcooking.

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.

You might also like

Lobster SauceLobster Sauce174 recipesSalmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesLobster CroquettesLobster Croquettes99 recipes