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Saltied Salmon

A lightly salted salmon served with browned butter and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Saltied Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Soak the salmon in cold water for 48 hours.

  2. Heat the salmon on moderate fire.

  3. Skim off the scum.

  4. Boil gently for about 2 minutes.

  5. Remove the salmon from the kettle.

  6. Drain the salmon.

Make the butter sauce

  1. Melt butter until it turns brown.

  2. Add the parsley to the butter.

  3. Cook for 1 minute.

Serve

  1. Pour the butter and parsley over the salmon.

  2. Serve warm.

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. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

  2. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

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

  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 protein, which sets and flakes as it cooks.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and browning gives it a nutty flavour.
Parsley
Adds a fresh, herbal aroma to the butter sauce.

The step that matters

Melt butter until it turns brown. Butter can go from brown to burnt very quickly. Browning happens when the milk solids toast, which gives a nutty flavour, but past that point the sauce turns bitter.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter. 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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