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Boiled Salmon

A whole salmon boiled in salted water with vinegar or lemon juice, served with parsley, lemon, and optional anchovy sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Boiled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scrape the scales from the salmon and clean it thoroughly, ensuring no blood remains.

  2. Bring a pot of salted water with a little vinegar or lemon juice to a boil.

Cook

  1. Add the salmon and boil for 2 minutes, then reduce heat and simmer gently until cooked, about 6 to 10 minutes per pound.

  2. Check for doneness by ensuring the flesh separates easily from the bones.

  3. Remove the salmon immediately to prevent overcooking.

Serve

  1. If not serving right away, keep it on a fish drainer covered with a thick cloth.

  2. Serve on a napkin or fish paper, garnished with parsley and lemon, and provide anchovy sauce on the side.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Salmon + anchovytop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together535 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  3. Parsley + anchovytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,702 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

  4. Lemon + anchovytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,080 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Vinegar + parsleytop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,477 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Forms the main body of the dish; gentle simmering keeps the flesh moist and tender.
Vinegar or lemon juice
Adds a light acidity to the poaching water, brightening the flavour of the fish.

The step that matters

Removing the salmon at doneness. Fish keeps cooking from residual heat after it leaves the water. Lifting it as soon as the flesh flakes away from the bones prevents it from becoming dry and firm.

“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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