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Superior Spiced Kippered Herrings

A pickled and smoked herring seasoned with allspice, bay, laurel, cassia, cloves, mace, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Superior Spiced Kippered Herrings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Select the largest and roundest herring, wash them in saltwater, and remove the eyes and gills.

  2. Wipe the fish, lay them open at the back, and clean out the insides.

Make the pickle and cure

  1. Prepare a pickle by boiling 5 quarts of water with ½ lb coarse sea salt, 1 lb coarse sugar, 2 oz ground allspice, 15 shredded bay leaves, and 6 shredded laurel leaves for 20 minutes, then strain.

  2. Soak the fish in the pickle for 6 hours.

Dry, smoke and finish

  1. Hang the fish by their shoulders, opened up, to dry in a quick current of air.

  2. Once dried, smoke the fish until they are a fine bright brown.

  3. Return the fish to the air, then lay them on their backs and brush the insides with a mixture of 2 parts essence of allspice and 1 part water.

  4. Repeat brushing with the mixture of essences (cassia, cloves, mace, bays) and water 3 to 4 times, according to taste.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Cassia + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together194 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl cinnamate (sweet, balsamic).

  3. Laurel + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Allspice + laureltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together627 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Herring
Forms the main body of the dish, carrying the flavour of the pickle and smoke.
Coarse sea salt
Draws moisture out of the fish and seasons it during the pickle soak.
Coarse sugar
Balances the salt in the pickle and adds a mild sweetness to the fish.
Ground allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the pickle.

The step that matters

Drying the fish in a quick current of air before smoking. Smoke sticks and colours the surface best when it is dry; damp fish smoke unevenly and can turn dull or sour. Drying forms a tacky surface that takes smoke well.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, allspice, laurel, cassia, clove):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Cardamomfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, allspice, laurel, cassia, clove. 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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