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Superior Spiced Kippered Herring

A preserved herring prepared by pickling, drying, smoking, and brushing with spiced essences.

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 Herring

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash the herring in salt water for 1 minute, removing the eyes and gills.

  2. Wipe the fish, open them 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 cup coarse sea salt, 1 lb sugar, 2 oz allspice, 15 bay leaves, and 6 laurel leaves for 20 minutes, then strain.

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

  3. Hang the fish by their shoulders in a quick air current to dry.

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

Flavour and finish

  1. The next day, lay the fish on their backs and brush the insides with a mixture of 2 tablespoons essence of allspice and 1 part water.

  2. Repeat brushing with the following mixture: 2 tablespoons essence of cassia, 4 tablespoons essence of cloves, 2 tablespoons essence of mace, 4 tablespoons essence of bays, and 6 tablespoons 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. Laurel + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 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 body of the dish, and its oily flesh stays moist during curing and smoking.
Coarse sea salt
Draws out moisture and seasons the fish during the pickle soak.
Sugar
Balances the salt and helps the fish brown during smoking.
Bay leaves
Adds aromatic flavour to the pickle that penetrates the fish.

The step that matters

Smoking until a fine bright brown. Smoke colour develops through browning reactions that depend on the fish being dry first. Hanging the fish to dry before smoking helps the surface take colour evenly rather than steaming.

Swap the mace

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, allspice, laurel, 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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