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Boiled Fish

A whole salmon is cleaned, wrapped in flour, boiled in salted water, and served with drawn butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Boiled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the salmon and wrap it in a floured cloth.

Cook and serve

  1. Place it in a pot with cold water and add a little coarse sea salt.

  2. Cook for 15 to 20 minutes per pound.

  3. Serve with drawn butter.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Salmon + flourtop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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 firms and turns opaque as it cooks.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and moisture to the served fish.

The step that matters

Cooking time per pound. Salmon overcooks quickly, and its flesh turns dry and chalky once the proteins tighten past the point of doneness. Timing by weight helps the centre stay moist and just set.

“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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