Skip to main content
Main

Salmon Spiced

A marinated salmon dish flavored with vinegar, spices, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Salmon Spiced

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Remove as many bones as possible from the cooked salmon and shape it compactly.

Make the pickling liquor

  1. In a saucepan, simmer the cooking liquid, malt vinegar, and spices for 30 minutes.

  2. Let the mixture cool, then strain it over the salmon.

Marinate and serve

  1. If the salmon is not fully submerged, turn it once during the 12 hours of marinating.

  2. Serve with mayonnaise sauce or a good salad dressing.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  4. Vinegar + allspicetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

  5. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Cooked salmon
Forms the body of the dish, and its flesh absorbs the flavour of the marinade.
Malt vinegar
Acidity that firms the fish and sharpens the flavour of the marinade.
Cooking liquid from salmon
Carries the salmon's own flavour into the marinade, adding savouriness.
Allspice berries
Adds warm, aromatic spice notes to the marinade.

The step that matters

Keeping the salmon fully submerged. Parts of the fish left above the liquid will not be acidified or flavoured evenly, so they can dry out or taste different. Turning the fish once during the 12 hours helps the marinade reach all surfaces.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, malt, vinegar, butter, allspice, clove):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Nutmegfits better
  3. Gingerfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, malt, vinegar, butter, allspice, clove. 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.

You might also like

Salmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesCanned SalmonCanned Salmon14 recipesSmoked SalmonSmoked Salmon14 recipes