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To Boil Salmon

Boiled salmon is prepared by cooking a whole salmon in salted water until tender.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Salmon and fish are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,078 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Boil Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean, scale, and wipe the salmon.

  2. Place the salmon in a fish kettle and cover it with boiling water.

  3. Add some coarse sea salt to the water.

Cook

  1. Boil for 12 minutes per pound, adjusting for thickness.

  2. Check doneness by inserting a knife between the fish and the bone; it should pass easily.

  3. Once done, lift the salmon from the water and place it on a fish drainer to let excess water drip off.

Serve

  1. Serve on a dish with a fish plate and a white napkin underneath.

  2. Garnish with green parsley.

  3. Serve with melted butter, parsley sauce, or lobster sauce in a tureen.

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. Salmon + fishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,078 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Is the main ingredient, cooked gently in water until its flesh turns opaque and flakes.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the poaching water so the fish is lightly flavoured as it cooks.

The step that matters

Checking doneness. Salmon keeps cooking from residual heat after it leaves the water, and overcooking dries the flesh and loosens its texture. Testing with a knife between the flesh and bone shows whether it is done before it is lifted out.

“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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