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Xo Boil Salmon

A boiled salmon served with a butter and egg yolk sauce, white sauce, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Xo Boil Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the salmon

  1. Wrap the salmon in a cloth and boil for 1 hour.

Make the sauce

  1. Melt 3 tablespoons of butter and stir in the mashed egg yolks, cayenne pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

  2. Melt 1 tablespoon of butter in 1 cup of milk with 1 tablespoon of flour until smooth.

  3. Beat the yolk of an egg with 1 teaspoon of cream, stir into the milk mixture, and heat until boiling.

  4. Add 1 tablespoon of chopped parsley just before serving.

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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
Provides the main body of the dish, cooked gently in its cloth until it is firm and flaky.
Egg yolks
Emulsify the butter and thicken the sauce, giving it a rich, smooth body.
Flour
Thickens the milk into a smooth, stable white sauce.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding creaminess and mild sweetness.

The step that matters

Heating the milk and egg yolk mixture. Once the beaten yolk is stirred into the hot milk mixture, it can scramble if heated too fiercely. Bringing it to a boil only after combining gently, while stirring, keeps the sauce smooth and creamy.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, egg, pepper, milk, flour, cream):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Coconutfits about as well
  3. Vanillafits less well
  4. Avocadofits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, egg, pepper, milk, flour, cream. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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