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To Boil Salmon

A boiled salmon seasoned with pepper and salt, served with shrimp or anchovy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and shrimp are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,931 recipes. Both carry 2,6-nonadienal, which smells cucumber, green. The science ↓

To Boil Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the salmon carefully.

Boil

  1. Boil it gently in warm water until done.

  2. Remove the salmon from the water immediately to avoid overcooking.

Broil and serve

  1. For broiling, cut the salmon into 1-inch thick slices.

  2. Season the slices with pepper and salt.

  3. Place each slice in a buttered sheet of white paper, twist the ends, and broil over a slow fire for 6 to 8 minutes.

  4. Serve the broiled salmon in the paper with shrimp or anchovy 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. Butter + shrimptop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

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

  2. Salmon + shrimptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together819 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  5. Pepper + shrimptop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,692 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylethanol (rose, floral).

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, cooked gently by boiling and then broiling.
Butter
Greases the paper so the salmon does not stick and adds richness to the fish.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the flesh directly, drawing out flavor on the surface of each slice.

The step that matters

Removing the salmon from the water immediately. Fish keeps cooking from its own residual heat after it leaves the pot. Leaving it in hot water lets the proteins tighten further, making the flesh dry and firm.

“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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