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Boiled Salmon

A whole salmon is simmered in salted water and served with fennel, lemon, parsley, and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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. Fill a large fish kettle with water, adding 1 tablespoon of coarse sea salt for every 2 quarts of water and a little vinegar.

  2. Wash and clean the salmon thoroughly.

  3. Place the salmon on a strainer.

Poach

  1. Bring the water to a boil.

  2. Gently add the salmon.

  3. Let it simmer.

  4. Cook for 8 minutes per pound.

Serve

  1. Once done, place the salmon on a hot dish lined with a serviette.

  2. Garnish the salmon with fennel.

  3. Cut lemon.

  4. Serve with parsley, lobster sauce, or tartare sauce.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Fennel + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Fennel + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together723 recipes

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

  4. Salmon + lobstertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together313 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  5. Salmon + fenneltop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together253 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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, cooking gently to stay moist and flaky.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the poaching water so the fish is flavoured as it cooks.

The step that matters

Gently add the salmon. Adding fish to water that is still at a rolling boil can break the flesh apart and toughen the outer layer. Keeping the water at a gentle simmer cooks the salmon evenly and keeps it tender and intact.

“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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