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Salad

Herring Salad

A salad of diced herring, apple, onions, dill pickles, walnuts, and a cider vinegar and sugar dressing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and dill match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 976 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Herring Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herring

  1. Soak the herring for 24 hours.

  2. Remove the skin and bones from the herring and dice it.

Make the salad

  1. Dice the apple, onions, dill pickles, and walnuts.

  2. In a bowl, mix the diced herring, apple, onions, pickles, walnuts, and ground pepper.

  3. Add the sugar to the cider vinegar and mix well.

  4. Pour the vinegar mixture over the salad and combine all ingredients.

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. Lemon + dilltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together976 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Apple + cidertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,238 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Pepper + dilltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,630 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

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 salad and provides its rich, savoury flavour.
Cider vinegar
Provides acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the salad.
Apple
Adds crisp texture and mild sweetness that balances the sharp vinegar.
Onions
Add sharp, pungent flavour and crunch to the salad.
Dill pickles
Add acidity, crunch and a tangy, herbal note.
Walnuts
Add crunch and a toasty, nutty flavour.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apple, pepper, lemon, dill, walnut, cider, vinegar):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Cucumberfits better
  3. Mustardfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against apple, pepper, lemon, dill, walnut, cider, vinegar. 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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