Skip to main content
Main

Herrings, Sauce for

A creamy sauce made with butter, shallots, flour, fish stock, vinegar, pepper, bay leaves, minced herring, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Shallot and flour match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,081 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Herrings, Sauce for

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Melt the butter in a saucepan over gentle heat and add the minced shallots. Cook until tender.

  2. Stir in the flour and cook until smooth.

  3. Gradually add the fish stock or water, vinegar, pepper, and bay leaves. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  4. Strain the sauce and mix in the minced herring and additional butter. Heat gently.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, mix in the beaten egg yolks when the sauce is slightly cooled.

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. Shallot + flourtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Shallot + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,898 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Shallot + vinegartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,374 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + fishtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Butter
Enriches the sauce with fat, giving it a smooth, rich mouthfeel.
Flour
Thickens the liquid into a smooth sauce as it cooks with the butter.
Egg yolks
Add richness and body, thickening the sauce gently when it is cooled slightly.
Salted herring
Provides the main savoury, salty flavour and texture of the sauce.

The step that matters

Mixing in the egg yolks. If the sauce is too hot when the beaten yolks go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Letting it cool slightly first lets the yolks thicken it smoothly.

Swap the shallot

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, fish, vinegar, pepper, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, fish, vinegar, pepper, 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.

You might also like

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes