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Boiled Salmon

A whole salmon is boiled and served with a sweet cream sauce and hard‑boiled eggs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiled Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Wash the salmon and wipe it dry.

  2. Rub it with salt and pepper.

  3. Sew the salmon in a strong cloth.

  4. Place it in a fish kettle and cover with cold water.

Boil and make the sauce

  1. Boil for 15 minutes per pound.

  2. In a saucepan, combine sweet cream, salt, pepper, butter, flour, and minced parsley, then boil the sauce for 2-3 minutes.

Serve

  1. Carefully remove the fish and place it on a heated dish.

  2. Pour the sauce over it.

  3. Garnish with parsley and sliced hard-boiled 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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Salmon + creamtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,401 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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, cooked gently in water until flaky.
Sweet cream
Makes the sauce rich and smooth, adding fat and body.
Butter
Adds richness and flavor to the sauce.
All-purpose flour
Thickens the cream sauce so it coats the fish.
Hard-boiled eggs
Add texture and a mild, creamy contrast as a garnish.

The step that matters

Boiling the salmon. Boiling for too long toughens the protein and dries the flesh, while too short a time leaves the centre underdone. Keeping the water below a hard rolling boil helps the fish cook evenly and stay moist.

Swap the parsley

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, pepper, cream, butter, flour, egg. 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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