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Boiled Salmon or Trout

A simple boiled fish dish seasoned with spices, lemon, onion, parsley, peppercorns, and salt.

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 ↓

Boiled Salmon or Trout

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the salmon

  1. Place the fish in a large pot with cold water.

  2. Add the mixed spices, lemon juice, onion, parsley, peppercorns, and salt.

  3. Simmer the mixture and allow it to come to a boil very slowly.

  4. When the fish boils or separates from the bone, it is done.

Serve

  1. Serve with melted butter, adding a tablespoon of the cooking liquid to the butter.

  2. Discard any remaining cooking liquid.

  3. Serve with boiled potatoes seasoned with salt.

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. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Fish + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,889 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Fish + parsleytop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Fish + oniontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,924 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish
Provides the main protein, which firms and turns opaque as it cooks in the poaching liquid.
Onion
Adds aromatic sweetness and savory depth to the poaching liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavor of the fish and poaching liquid.

The step that matters

Bring the liquid to a boil very slowly. Gentle heat keeps the fish moist and tender. Boiling hard can toughen the proteins and cause the flesh to break apart.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against fish, lemon, parsley. 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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