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BoiUd Salmon

A salmon fillet cooked by boiling in salted water, served with lemon, parsley, and lobster or shrimp sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

BoiUd Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scale and clean the salmon, ensuring no blood remains inside.

  2. In a saucepan, combine cold water and salt (3 oz. salt per ½ gallon water).

Cook

  1. Add the salmon and bring to a boil, skimming off any scum.

  2. Simmer gently until the fish separates easily from the bone, about 8 minutes per pound for thick fish, 6 minutes for thin fish.

  3. Drain the salmon and cover with hot cloths; do not leave in the water.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot napkin with lemon and parsley garnish, alongside 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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Salmon + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,918 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  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
Provides the flesh that firms and flakes as it cooks in the salted water.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the poaching water so the fish is flavoured as it cooks.
Lobster or shrimp sauce
Adds a rich, savoury sauce that complements the mild flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Simmer gently, do not boil hard. A hard boil toughens the proteins and breaks the fish apart, while gentle simmering cooks it evenly until it separates easily from the bone.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, lemon, 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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