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Herring Salad

A salad of herring, potatoes, apples, pickles, beets, eggs, onions, almonds, capers, and currant jelly, seasoned with vinegar, pepper, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Potato and dill work together. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 423 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Herring Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herring

  1. Soak the herring overnight in cold water. Drain, rinse, and remove skin and bones.

  2. Stir the herring until smooth with vinegar and egg yolks. Season with pepper and sugar.

  3. If too thick, add more vinegar to achieve a thin sauce consistency.

Prepare the vegetables and fruit

  1. Cut the herring, potatoes, apples, pickles, and beets into small pieces.

  2. Chop the whites of the hard-boiled eggs and onion.

Combine and finish

  1. Mix all ingredients together, then add almonds, capers, and currant jelly.

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 + dilltop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together423 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Pepper + dilltop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,630 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + potatotop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,305 recipes

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

  5. Vinegar + dilltop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together659 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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 flavour and the body of the salad.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Enrich the sauce, adding richness and a smooth, creamy texture.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens flavour and thins the sauce to the desired consistency.
Potatoes
Add bulk and a mild, starchy body that soaks up the sauce.
Beets
Add earthy sweetness and colour to the salad.
Apples
Add tartness and crisp texture that balance the rich herring.

The step that matters

Thinning the sauce with vinegar. The herring and yolk mixture thickens as it stands, so add vinegar gradually until it reaches a thin, pourable consistency. Adding too much at once can make the sauce sharp and watery.

Swap the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, egg, pepper, sugar, potato, dill, onion):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, egg, pepper, sugar, potato, dill, onion. 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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