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Boiled Salmon

A salmon fillet boiled, served with butter‑parsley sauce and garnished with parsley and sliced eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Boiled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare 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 dish.

Make the sauces

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

  2. For the pickle, take 3 cups of the boiling liquid, add vinegar, pepper, and salt, then boil with parsley and thyme for a few minutes.

  3. Let it cool.

Serve

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

  2. Garnish with parsley and sliced eggs.

  3. Pour the cooled pickle over the fish.

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

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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, cooked gently in salted water so it stays moist and tender.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel to the fish.
Vinegar
Adds sharp acidity to the pickle, balancing the richness of the fish.
Lemon juice
Adds bright acidity that cuts through the butter.

The step that matters

Carefully unwrap the salmon. Salmon is delicate and flakes easily when hot and wet. Lifting it gently from the bag keeps the fillet intact so it looks neat on the dish.

Swap the thyme

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

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymethe original
  4. Capersfits about as well

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