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Salad

Middle Slice of Salmon

Boiled salmon served with melted butter, parsley, or lobster or shrimp sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 28,563 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Middle Slice of Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the salmon

  1. Fill a pot with water and add coarse sea salt.

  2. Bring the water to a boil, then reduce to a gentle simmer.

  3. Add the salmon to the pot and cook for ten minutes per pound.

  4. Once cooked, carefully remove the salmon and place it on a napkin.

Serve

  1. Serve with melted butter and parsley, or with lobster or shrimp 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. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Salmon + parsleytop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon
Its proteins set as it cooks, firming the flesh and turning it opaque.
Melted butter
Adds richness and a silky mouthfeel that suits the mild fish.

The step that matters

Keep the water at a gentle simmer. A rolling boil toughens the proteins and can break the fish apart. A gentle simmer cooks the salmon evenly and keeps the flesh tender and moist.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Parsleythe original
  3. Dillfits about as well
  4. Nutmegfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter. 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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