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Salmon Boiled

A boiled salmon served with lemon, parsley, cucumber and hollandaise sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Turnip and leek match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,046 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Salmon Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Place the cleaned salmon in a fish kettle.

  2. Cover with boiling water.

  3. Add salt to taste.

  4. Simmer gently until the fish separates easily from the bone, ensuring it is thoroughly cooked.

  5. Drain the fish well.

Serve

  1. Place it on a folded napkin.

  2. Garnish with cut lemon and parsley.

  3. Serve with sliced cucumber and Hollandaise or another suitable 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. Turnip + leektop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,046 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  4. Leek + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together360 recipes

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

  5. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Is the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks through in the poaching liquid.
Leeks
Add mild aromatic sweetness and flavour to the poaching liquid, which is carried into the fish.
Onion
Adds savoury aromatic depth to the poaching liquid as it softens and releases its flavour.
Hollandaise sauce
Its butter and egg emulsion adds richness and fat that contrasts with the lean, delicate fish.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the fish separates easily from the bone. Boiling vigorously toughens the delicate muscle fibres and can break the fish apart. Gentle simmering cooks it evenly, and the flesh separates from the bone when it is fully cooked.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, fish, turnip, leek, celery, parsley, thyme):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, fish, turnip, leek, celery, parsley, thyme. 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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