Skip to main content
Salad

Herrixg Salad

A salad of herring, boiled potatoes, onions, pickled beets, dressed with a vinaigrette of cider vinegar, mustard, salt, pepper, egg yolks, oil, and milk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Potato and onion are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,023 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Herrixg Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herring

  1. Wash the herring in cold water, scale, skin, and remove heads and insides.

  2. Wash again, dry, and place in a deep dish with enough vinegar to cover. Let sit for 8 hours.

  3. Remove bones, cut fish finely, and place in a salad dish.

Prepare the vegetables

  1. Boil potatoes with skins, then cool, peel, and cut into quarters. Slice and add to fish.

  2. Finely chop the onions and cut beets into ½‑inch squares, then mix with the fish and potatoes.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. Heat vinegar, mustard, salt, and pepper in a skillet until hot but not boiling.

  2. Beat the yolks and oil together, then stir in the milk and mix into the hot vinegar until thick, but do not boil.

  3. Once cooled, mix the dressing with the salad.

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. Potato + oniontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  2. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  3. Cider + vinegartop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,431 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  4. Potato + olivetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,458 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  5. Potato + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,340 recipes

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

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 flesh and the salad's central flavour.
Egg yolks
Emulsify with the oil and milk, thickening the dressing into a creamy coating.
Cider vinegar
Acidity that softens and sharpens the fish and balances the rich dressing.
Potatoes
Add body and starch that bulk out the salad and soak up some dressing.
Olive oil
Adds fat that enriches the dressing and helps it emulsify smoothly.
Prepared mustard
Adds sharpness and helps stabilise the emulsified dressing.

The step that matters

Heating the dressing without boiling. Egg yolks thicken when gently heated but scramble and curdle if they boil, leaving the dressing grainy instead of smooth and creamy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, cider, vinegar, mustard, pepper, egg, olive):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Broccolifits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, cider, vinegar, mustard, pepper, egg, olive. 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.

More herring salad recipes

Swedish 6 See all 41 →

You might also like

Chicken SaladChicken Salad623 recipesSalad DressingSalad Dressing491 recipesTomato SaladTomato Salad179 recipesCold SlawCold Slaw160 recipes