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How to Boil Fish

A whole salmon is boiled in water with vinegar and horseradish, then served with sauces and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

How to Boil Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the salmon

  1. Place the whole salmon in a pot of cold water.

  2. Add vinegar and scraped horseradish to the water.

  3. Bring the water to a gentle boil.

  4. If the salmon is crimped or sliced, boil for 1 minute, then drain and let it sit for 2 minutes.

  5. Return the salmon to the pot and continue boiling gently until cooked through.

Serve

  1. Serve with your choice of sauce, sliced cucumber, or capers mixed with melted 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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Sauce + anchovytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Lobster + anchovytop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together470 recipes

    Shared aroma: octanal (fat, soap).

  5. Lobster + saucetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,095 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
Is the main protein, cooked gently in water until its flesh turns opaque and flakes.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity to the poaching water that brightens the mild flavour of the fish.
Scraped horseradish
Contributes a pungent, aromatic heat that flavours the poaching water and the fish.
Butter
Melted and mixed with capers, it adds richness and fat to the serving sauce.

The step that matters

Keep the water at a gentle boil. A rolling boil toughens and breaks up the delicate fish, while a gentle simmer cooks it evenly and keeps it moist. Overcooking also dries the flesh, so it should be checked as it cooks.

Swap the horseradish

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, vinegar, lobster, sauce, shrimp, anchovy, ketchup):

  1. Horseradishthe original
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Capsicumfits about as well
  4. Shallotfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, vinegar, lobster, sauce, shrimp, anchovy, ketchup. 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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