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Herring Roe Fritters

Fried bacon rolls filled with herring roe and tomato, garnished with parsley and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Herring Roe Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fritters

  1. Skin and cut the tomato into small pieces.

  2. Place a piece of herring roe and a piece of tomato on each slice of bacon.

  3. Roll up the bacon slices and dip them in the frying batter.

Fry and serve

  1. Fry in hot fat until golden brown.

  2. Garnish with chopped parsley and coralline pepper.

  3. Serve in small paper cases.

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. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

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

  3. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Roe + parsleytop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together259 recipes

    Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

  5. Roe + peppertop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

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

What each ingredient does

Herring roe
Provides the rich, savoury filling inside each bacon roll.
Bacon
Wraps the filling and adds fat and savoury flavour as it fries.
Frying batter
Forms a crisp, golden coating around the rolls when fried.
Tomato
Adds moisture and a light acidity that balances the rich filling.

The step that matters

Fry in hot fat until golden brown. Hot fat sets the batter quickly, so it crisps before it can soak up grease. Frying too cool makes the coating heavy and greasy, and the bacon and roe may not cook through.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (roe, parsley, pepper):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Potatofits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against roe, parsley, pepper. 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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