The World Table

An interactive culinary compendium: recipes, lexicon and study

Technique

Salted water & the float test

188 dishes across 100 chapters · 0 marked cooked

On the Path of Study: Semester 1: Knife & Fire Foundations, Semester 9: Seafood Mastery

From the Lexicon, Poach, Simmer, Boil

Three temperatures pretending to be one method. POACH: 71–82°C, water barely shivering: eggs, fish, chicken breast, anything delicate that violent bubbles would shred. SIMMER: 85–95°C, lazy bubbles: stocks, braises, beans, sauces. BOIL: 100°C rolling: pasta, blanching, potatoes, and almost nothing made of protein. The most common home error is treating these as synonyms; the most common professional discipline is watching the bubbles, not the dial. Salt poaching liquids and courts-bouillons like they are the sauce, because for those minutes they are.

Read it in the Lexicon →

How to tell it is going right

  • The water was salted before anything went in, and tasting it confirms it: seasoned on the tongue, with the salt dissolved rather than sitting on the pot floor.
  • There is enough water, hot enough, that the pot returns to its boil quickly after the food goes in and never stops moving.
  • Where the dish uses the float as its signal, the signal is obeyed: the pieces rise and they come out then, not several minutes later once something else was finished.
  • Nothing is stuck to the bottom of the pot or welded to itself, and the water has not thickened into a cloudy sludge.
  • Drained on a bite rather than on the clock: resistance at the centre, with no chalky raw core.

Where it goes wrong The pot was too small and the water unsalted, so it never recovered its boil: the food sat in slack water, went gummy at the surface, and comes out bland in a way that no sauce afterwards can fix.

This technique, on camera Search films of salted water & the float test

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