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Salmon in Fresh Pickle

Salmon served with a pickle made from its own cooking water, vinegar, pepper, and fennel.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and fennel match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,216 recipes. Both carry myristicin, which smells spice, warm. The science ↓

Salmon in Fresh Pickle

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Make the pickling liquid

  1. Save the water in which the salmon has been boiled.

  2. Mix it with half the quantity of vinegar.

  3. Boil the mixture with whole pepper.

Pickle and serve

  1. Let it cool, then pour it over the salmon.

  2. Serve with fresh fennel.

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. Pepper + fenneltop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,216 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  2. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

  3. Salmon + fenneltop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together253 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Vinegar + fenneltop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together505 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Salmon + vinegartop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the fish.
Water from boiled salmon
Forms the liquid base and carries the flavour of the fish into the pickle.
Whole pepper
Adds a warm, aromatic spice that infuses the liquid as it boils.

The step that matters

Letting the liquid cool before pouring. Pouring hot liquid over the salmon would keep cooking the delicate fish and make its texture firm and dry. Cooling first keeps it tender while the acid slowly penetrates.

Swap the fennel

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, vinegar, pepper):

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. Fennelthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, vinegar, 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.

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