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To Boil Salmon

A whole salmon is boiled, then sliced and broiled in buttered paper, served with anchovy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Anchovy and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,057 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Boil Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the salmon carefully.

  2. Boil it gently in warm water until done.

  3. Remove the salmon from the water immediately after cooking.

Season and wrap

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

  2. Season the slices with pepper and salt.

  3. Wrap each slice in a buttered sheet of white paper, twisting the ends closed.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil the wrapped slices over a slow fire for 6 to 8 minutes.

  2. Serve the salmon in the paper with 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. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Salmon + anchovytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together535 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Butter + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,697 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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
Adds richness and moisture to the paper-wrapped slices as they cook.
Anchovy sauce
Adds a salty, savoury flavour to the salmon served at the end.

The step that matters

Remove the salmon from the water immediately after cooking. Salmon keeps cooking from residual heat, so leaving it in hot water can overcook the flesh, making it 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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