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Herring Roes on Toast

A dish of herring roe served on toasted bread with anchovy paste, butter, lemon juice, shallot, pepper, salt, and cayenne.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Herring Roes on Toast

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the roe

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Place the herring roe in a well-buttered sauté pan.

  3. Sprinkle the chopped shallot over the roe.

  4. Add the lemon juice and cover with a piece of buttered paper.

  5. Bake for about 8 minutes.

Prepare the toast

  1. Mix the anchovy paste with half an ounce of butter and spread it over the toasted bread.

  2. Cut the bread into strips the size of the roe.

Assemble and serve

  1. Remove the roe from the pan and fasten each on a tiny silver skewer.

  2. Arrange the roe on the toast, garnish with fresh parsley, and serve.

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 + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  3. Roe + anchovytop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together65 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  5. Bread + anchovytop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,260 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanol (green, fruity).

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

What each ingredient does

Herring roe
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to a soft, delicate texture.
Anchovy paste
Adds a salty, savoury flavour to the buttered toast.
Butter
Carries flavour and keeps the roe and toast moist as they cook.
Shallot
Contributes a mild, sweet onion-like aroma during baking.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich roe and butter.

The step that matters

Baking the roe. Roe is delicate and can dry out or toughen if overcooked, so it should be baked just until set. Covering it with buttered paper traps steam and moisture, helping it stay tender in the hot oven.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (roe, bread, anchovy, butter, lemon, pepper):

  1. Shallotthe original
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Potatofits about as well
  4. Asparagusfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against roe, bread, anchovy, butter, lemon, 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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