Skip to main content
Main

Salmon, Boiled.—

A salmon boiled in wine, water, butter, herbs, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and carrot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,053 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Salmon, Boiled.—

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scale, empty, and wash the salmon carefully.

  2. In a fish kettle, combine the wine, water, butter, parsley, onion, carrots, bay leaves, salt, and pepper.

  3. Place the salmon in the kettle, holding the four corners of a cloth to keep it contained.

Cook and serve

  1. Let the fish simmer gently for 2 hours.

  2. Serve with some of the cooking water added to any sauce you serve with it.

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 + carrottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  4. Clove + carrottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Carrot + peppertop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Forms the main dish; gentle poaching keeps its flesh moist and tender.
White french wine
Adds aroma and acidity to the poaching liquid, flavouring the fish.
Fresh butter
Adds richness and body to the cooking liquid and any sauce made from it.
Carrots
Add gentle sweetness and aroma to the poaching liquid.

The step that matters

Keep the liquid at a gentle simmer. Boiling vigorously toughens the fish proteins and breaks the flesh apart, so a slow, gentle simmer keeps the salmon tender and intact.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, wine, butter, parsley, clove, carrot, pepper):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Capsicumfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, wine, butter, parsley, clove, carrot, pepper. 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.

You might also like

Salmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesCarrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesCanned SalmonCanned Salmon14 recipes