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Herring Fritters, Allemande

A fried dish of smoked herring pieces coated in a thick batter, served with fried parsley garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Herring Fritters, Allemande

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herring

  1. Skin and fillet the smoked herrings, then cut them into neat pieces.

  2. In a deep dish, season the herring pieces with pepper and lemon juice, and moisten with a little sweet oil.

Batter and fry

  1. Prepare a thick batter by mixing flour, eggs, and milk.

  2. Drop the herring pieces into the batter, then fry them in hot fat or lard until they are light brown.

  3. Serve on a folded napkin and garnish with fried parsley.

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 + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms the thick batter that coats the herring and crisps when fried.
Eggs
Bind the batter and help it set and brown around the herring.
Milk
Thins the flour and eggs into a coating batter that fries to a tender crust.
Smoked herrings
Provide the main smoky, savoury flavour of the fritters.

The step that matters

Frying the coated herring. The fat must be hot enough to set the batter quickly; if it is too cool, the batter absorbs oil and turns greasy instead of crisp and light brown.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, lemon, flour, egg, milk):

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Cardamomfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Marjoramfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, lemon, flour, egg, milk. 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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