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Salmon, Boiled

Boiled salmon served with lemon, parsley, cucumber, and sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Salmon, Boiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and poach

  1. Scale and clean the salmon.

  2. Place the salmon in a fish kettle and cover it with boiling water. Add coarse sea salt to taste.

  3. Simmer gently until the fish separates easily from the bone.

Drain and serve

  1. Drain the salmon well and place it on a folded napkin. Garnish with cut lemon and parsley.

  2. Serve with shrimp or another suitable sauce and thinly-sliced cucumber.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + cucumbertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + cucumbertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,067 recipes

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

  4. Salmon + cucumbertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together513 recipes

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

  5. Salmon + shrimptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together819 recipes

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

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; simmering gently cooks it until it flakes away from the bone.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the poaching water so the fish is flavoured through as it cooks.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until the fish separates easily from the bone. A rolling boil toughens and breaks up the proteins, leaving dry, ragged flesh. Gentle simmering cooks the fish evenly so it stays moist and tender.

Swap the cucumber

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Asparagusfits better
  3. Okrafits better
  4. Cucumberthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, lemon, parsley, shrimp. 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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