Name: To Pickle Fresh Herring
Ingredients: fresh herring; coarse sea salt; black pepper; whole cloves; vinegar

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Pickle Fresh Herring

Ingredients

Directions

Scale and clean the herring thoroughly.
Cut off the heads.
In a pot, combine vinegar, coarse sea salt, black pepper, and whole cloves; bring to a boil.
Allow the mixture to cool, then pour it over the fish in a stone jar.
Place the jar on a warm stove for half a day.
Afterward, store the jar in a cold place.

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.

Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together17,451 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).
Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,814 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together10,386 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).