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Boiled Salmon

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

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the salmon thoroughly, ensuring no blood remains inside.

Cook

  1. Boil the salmon gently in enough water to cover it, adding salt.

  2. Cook for about 8 minutes per pound.

  3. Remove the salmon from the water as soon as it's done.

Serve

  1. Serve with dressed cucumbers, shrimp or lobster sauce, and garnish with parsley and lemon.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Cucumber + parsleytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Cucumber + lemontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

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 water until just firm and flaky.
Dressed cucumbers
Add cool, crisp contrast to the warm, rich fish.
Shrimp or lobster sauce
Adds a rich, savoury sauce that complements the mild salmon.

The step that matters

Remove the salmon as soon as it's done. Salmon keeps cooking from residual heat after leaving the water. Leaving it in too long can dry out the flesh and make it lose its tender texture.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

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