Name: Red Herring Canapes
Ingredients: 1 dry red herring (canned); 2 tablespoons butter; stale bread slices

Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Red Herring Canapes

Ingredients

1 dry red herring (canned)
2 tablespoons butter
stale bread slices

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Pound the dry red herring with the butter until well combined.
Prepare slices of stale bread as directed in the previous recipe.

Assemble and bake

Spread the herring mixture on the bread slices.
Place the prepared bread in a warm oven (300°F / 150°C) for 10 minutes.

Serve

Serve on a folded napkin, with or without eggs.

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.

Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

What each ingredient does

Dry red herring: Provides the main savoury flavour and the substance of the spread.
Butter: Binds the pounded herring into a smooth spread and adds richness.

“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.