Skip to main content
Main

Boiled Salmon Steak

A boiled salmon steak served with seasoned broth.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Celery and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,810 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Boiled Salmon Steak

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the broth

  1. Boil the broth or water with celery and parsley for flavor.

  2. Season with salt and pepper.

  3. Cut salmon steaks into suitable pieces.

  4. Add salmon fragments and bones to the boiling liquid.

Cook and serve

  1. Place salmon pieces in a shallow saucepan.

  2. Strain the seasoned broth over them.

  3. Cover and cook briskly for 8 to 10 minutes.

  4. Serve in a deep dish with the remaining broth instead of sauce.

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. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Celery + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together16,012 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + white winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Pepper + white winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,433 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Salmon steaks
Provide the main fish, which cooks gently in the seasoned broth and becomes flaky.
Broth or water
Forms the poaching liquid that cooks the salmon and carries the seasoning.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the poaching liquid, giving the dish a brighter flavor.

The step that matters

Cover and cook briskly for 8 to 10 minutes. Boiling too hard can toughen and break up delicate salmon, while the liquid must stay hot enough to cook the fish through. Keeping the pan covered holds in heat so the fish cooks evenly.

Swap the celery

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, pepper, white wine, salmon):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Fennelfits better
  4. Celerythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, pepper, white wine, salmon. 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.

You might also like

Salmon SaladSalmon Salad155 recipesSalmon CroquettesSalmon Croquettes129 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesCelery StewCelery Stew25 recipes