Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Salmon

A boiled salmon served with a butter‑parsley sauce and garnished with parsley and sliced egg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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

Cook the salmon

  1. Sew the salmon in a mosquito‑net bag.

  2. Boil in salted water for 15 minutes per pound.

  3. Carefully unwrap the salmon and place it on a hot platter.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the drawn butter with minced parsley and lemon juice.

  2. Pour half of the butter mixture over the salmon and serve the rest in a separate dish.

  3. Garnish with parsley and sliced egg.

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. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  3. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 recipes

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

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Salmon + eggtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,485 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Poaching gently in salted water keeps the flesh moist and tender while it cooks through.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and fat, giving the salmon a smooth, moist mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that cuts through the rich butter and brightens the flavour.
Minced parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the butter sauce.

The step that matters

Boil in salted water for 15 minutes per pound. Salmon cooks through gently, and proteins tighten as they heat. Boiling too long squeezes out moisture and leaves the flesh dry and firm, so time it by weight and check that it flakes easily.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (salmon, butter, lemon, egg):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Capersfits about as well
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, lemon, egg. 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

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesSalmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesCanned SalmonCanned Salmon14 recipes