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To Boil Salmon

A whole salmon is boiled after being cleaned and wrapped in flour, served with lemon, fish sauce, or lobster sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Lobster and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,095 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Boil Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the salmon thoroughly in salt and water.

  2. Wrap the salmon in a floured cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the wrapped salmon into boiling water.

  2. Boil for 1.5 to 2 hours.

  3. Serve with lemon, fish sauce, or lobster 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. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

  3. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Salmon + fish saucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together119 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Flour + saucetop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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, cooking gently to a flaky, moist texture.
Flour
Forms a wrapping that shields the fish from direct contact with the boiling water.

The step that matters

Boil for 1.5 to 2 hours. Gentle, sustained boiling cooks the whole fish evenly through. Too little time leaves the centre underdone, while overcooking dries and toughens the flesh.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Limefits better
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Avocadofits about as well
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, flour, fish sauce, lobster, sauce. 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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