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To Dry Salmon

A method of preserving salmon by salting, sugaring, and drying it.

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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Open the fish and remove the insides, including the roe.

  2. Scald the fish.

  3. Rub the fish with coarse sea salt.

  4. Hang the fish to drain for 24 to 30 hours.

Cure

  1. Mix the sugar, coarse sea salt, and saltpetre together. Rub the mixture thoroughly into the salmon.

  2. Place the salmon on a dish.

  3. Let the salmon sit for 48 hours.

  4. Rub the salmon again with coarse sea salt.

  5. Let the salmon sit until the next evening; it will then be ready to dry.

Dry and smoke

  1. Wipe the salmon thoroughly after drying.

  2. Spread the salmon open with two sticks.

  3. Hang the salmon in a chimney where a wood fire is burning.

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

Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the fish, helping it keep during curing and drying.
Saltpetre
Helps preserve the fish's colour and adds to its curing action.
Sugar
Balances the saltiness and softens the harshness of the cure.

The step that matters

Rubbing the cure into the salmon. The salt and saltpetre mixture must reach all parts of the flesh evenly. Uneven coverage lets some areas spoil or cure unevenly, so the mixture should be rubbed in thoroughly.

“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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