Name: Brine for Boiling Fish
Ingredients: 4 ounces fine common salt (or 5 ounces Maldon salt) for small fish; 5 ounces fine common salt (or 6 ounces Maldon salt) for cod, lobsters, crabs, prawns, and shrimps; 8 ounces fine common salt (or 9 ounces Maldon salt) for salmon; 1 gallon water

Why it works: Fish and salmon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,078 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Brine for Boiling Fish

Ingredients

4 ounces fine common salt (or 5 ounces Maldon salt) for small fish
5 ounces fine common salt (or 6 ounces Maldon salt) for cod, lobsters, crabs, prawns, and shrimps
8 ounces fine common salt (or 9 ounces Maldon salt) for salmon
1 gallon water

Directions

Fill a large pot with 1 gallon of water.
Add the appropriate amount of salt based on the type of fish you are boiling.
Stir the water until the salt is fully dissolved.
Bring the salted water to a boil before adding 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.

Fish + salmontop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,078 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Lobster + salmontop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together313 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Fish + lobstertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together326 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

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

What each ingredient does

Fine common salt: Dissolves into the water to season the fish as it cooks; the amount depends on the fish type.
Water: Carries the dissolved salt and forms the cooking liquid for the fish.

The step that matters

Dissolve the salt fully before adding the fish. Salt that is not fully dissolved stays as grains and seasons the fish unevenly. Bringing the brine to a boil before adding fish keeps the water at a steady temperature as the fish goes in.

“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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Brine for Boiling Fish