Why it works: Salmon and horseradish work together. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 250 recipes. Both carry eugenol, which smells clove, spicy. The science ↓
To Boil Salmon
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare and poach
Soak the salmon in salt water for about 1 hour.
Place the salmon in a fish kettle with lukewarm water.
Add salt, horseradish, and sweet herbs.
Boil gently for about 30 minutes for thick pieces or 20 minutes for smaller pieces.
Serve
Remove the salmon from the water, dry it well, and place it on a serving plate.
Garnish with scraped horseradish or fried smelts.
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.
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Salmon + horseradishtop 16% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together250 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 body; gentle poaching firms the flesh while keeping it moist and flaky.
- Horseradish
- Adds a sharp, pungent bite that cuts through the richness of the fish.
- Sweet herbs
- Contributes a mild aroma that perfumes the poaching water and the fish.
The step that matters
Boil gently. A hard, rolling boil agitates the salmon and toughens its proteins, causing the flesh to break apart and dry out. Keeping the water at a gentle simmer cooks it evenly and keeps it tender and intact.
“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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