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Herring Sauce

A savory sauce made with herring, stock, flour, fat, onion, vinegar, sugar, capers, wine, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,024 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Herring Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash the herring in cold water and chop finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Heat the fat in a pan and brown the flour.

  2. Add the chopped onion and cook until soft.

  3. Stir in the soup stock and bring to a boil.

  4. Add the herring, vinegar, and sugar and boil for a few minutes.

  5. Strain the sauce through a fine sieve.

  6. Stir in the capers and white wine and bring to a boil again.

  7. Thicken the sauce with the egg yolks.

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. Flour + caperstop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,024 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Vinegar + white winetop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,776 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Onion + white winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,535 recipes

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

  5. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

What each ingredient does

Herring
Provides the main fish flavour that defines the sauce.
Flour
Browned in fat to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the sauce when stirred in near the end.
Capers
Add a sharp, briny acidity that cuts the richness.
Onion
Softened to add sweetness and aromatic depth to the base.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken through gentle heat; if the sauce boils after they are added, the proteins can scramble and curdle, leaving a grainy texture. Add them off the boil or over very low heat.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, vinegar, sugar, capers, white wine, egg):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Mustardfits better
  3. Arrowrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, vinegar, sugar, capers, white wine, egg. 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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