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Boiled Salmon

A salmon slice boiled in salted water, served with butter‑parsley sauce and a vinegar‑pepper pickle.

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

Poach the salmon

  1. Sew the tip of the salmon slice into a mosquito-net bag.

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

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

Make the butter sauce

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

Make the pickle and serve

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

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

  3. Pour the cooled pickle over the fish.

  4. Garnish with parsley and sliced eggs.

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
Forms the main body of the dish and is cooked gently by poaching in the bag.
Drawn butter
Adds richness and a smooth, moist mouthfeel to the fish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter sauce.
Vinegar
Provides sharp acidity to the pickle liquid that flavours the fish.
Eggs
Sliced as a garnish, adding a contrasting texture and colour.

The step that matters

Boil the salmon in salted water for 15 minutes per pound. Salmon is easily overcooked, which makes it dry and firm. Timing by weight and keeping the water at a gentle boil helps the flesh cook evenly and stay moist.

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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