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Brine for Boiling Fish

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
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Why it works: Fish and salmon 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 ↓

Brine for Boiling Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Mix 4 ounces of fine common salt with 1 gallon of water for small fish.

  2. For cod, lobsters, crabs, prawns, and shrimps, use 5 to 6 ounces of salt per gallon.

  3. For salmon, use 8 ounces of salt per gallon.

  4. Ensure the water is well skimmed from the moment scum forms.

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. Fish + salmontop 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

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