Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Salmon, with Egg Sauce

A boiled salmon served with a sauce of butter, lemon, pepper, and chopped hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Boiled Salmon, with Egg Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no cooking times; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Poach the salmon

  1. Fill a large pot with water, add salt, and bring to a boil.

  2. Carefully add the whole salmon to the boiling water and cook for about 15‑20 minutes until the fish is cooked through.

Make the egg sauce

  1. While the salmon is cooking, prepare the egg sauce by chopping the hard‑boiled eggs.

  2. In a small saucepan, melt the butter over low heat, then stir in the lemon juice and black pepper.

  3. Add the chopped eggs to the butter mixture and stir gently.

Serve

  1. Once the salmon is done, remove it from the pot and serve with the egg sauce drizzled on top.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

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

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

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 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
Forms the main body of the dish and becomes flaky and opaque as it cooks through.
Hard-boiled eggs
Chopped into the sauce, they add body and a rich, creamy texture.
Butter
Melts to form the fat base of the sauce, giving it richness and smooth mouthfeel.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and egg flavors.

The step that matters

Adding the salmon to boiling water. Lowering the fish into water that is already at a full boil helps it cook evenly and keeps the flesh moist. Dropping it in carefully prevents the fish from breaking apart.

“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