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Smoked Salmon

Broiled smoked salmon served with butter, pepper, horseradish, and fennel or parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Smoked Salmon

Why it works: Horseradish and fennel share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 26 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Smoked Salmon

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the salmon

  1. Wash the salmon in two waters, rubbing off the salt.

  2. Place the salmon in a skillet and cover with warm water.

  3. Simmer for 15 minutes, then boil for 5 minutes.

  4. Remove the salmon, wipe it dry, and place it on a buttered grill.

Broil and serve

  1. Broil until nicely browned on both sides.

  2. Transfer to a hot dish, butter liberally, and season with pepper.

  3. Garnish with grated horseradish and fennel seed or parsley.

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.

Photo for illustrative purposes only · Contact us to use it

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. Horseradish + fenneltop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together26 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Pepper + fenneltop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,216 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Pepper + horseradishtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,646 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Salmon + fenneltop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together253 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  5. Salmon + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,481 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

Smoked salmon
Provides the main flesh and smoky flavour that the dish is built around.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the surface brown on the grill.
Grated horseradish
Adds sharp, pungent heat that cuts through the richness of the fish.

The step that matters

Broil until nicely browned on both sides. The salmon is already cooked and only needs surface browning. Buttering the grill and watching the colour prevents sticking and drying, since the flesh can toughen quickly under strong direct heat.

Swap the horseradish

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

  1. Chivefits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Horseradishthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against salmon, butter, pepper, fennel. 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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