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Salad

To Dry Salmon

A method of preserving salmon by drying it with salt, saltpetre, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Salmon and sugar work together. They rank in the top 35% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 931 recipes. Both carry guaiacol, which smells smoky, sweet. The science ↓

To Dry Salmon

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the fish down and remove the insides and roe.

  2. Rub the whole fish with common salt after scaling it.

Cure

  1. Let it hang for 24 hours to drain.

  2. Mix saltpetre, bay salt, and sugar, then rub this mixture into the salmon.

  3. Place the salmon on a large dish or tray for 2 days.

  4. After 2 days, rub it well with common salt and let it sit for another 24 hours.

Dry and hang

  1. Wipe the salmon well after draining.

  2. Hang it in a dry place, keeping it open with two small sticks.

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 + sugartop 35% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together931 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

What each ingredient does

Common salt
Draws moisture out of the fish and helps preserve it during curing.
Saltpetre
Acts as a curing agent that helps preserve the flesh and sets its colour.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the flesh and seasons it through the cure.
Coarse sugar
Balances the saltiness and adds mild sweetness to the cured flesh.

The step that matters

Wipe and hang the salmon dry. Removing surface moisture before hanging slows spoilage and helps the cure form a firm, dry surface. Damp fish is more likely to spoil during drying.

“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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