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Fresh Herrings Broiled

Broiled herrings seasoned with vinegar, salt, and suet, served with parsley and optional butter-mustard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Fresh Herrings Broiled

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Mix vinegar, water, and coarse sea salt in a bowl.

  2. Soak the herrings in the mixture for 10 minutes.

Cook and serve

  1. Remove the herrings and broil them over a clear fire.

  2. Rub the gridiron bars with suet to prevent sticking.

  3. Serve garnished with parsley.

  4. Optionally serve with melted butter mixed with mustard and vinegar or lemon juice.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Vinegar + mustardtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Parsley + mustardtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  4. Mustard + lemontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,816 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Parsley + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh herrings
The main fish, which is cooked whole and becomes flaky and tender under heat.
Suet
Coats the gridiron bars so the fish releases cleanly instead of sticking.
Melted butter
Adds richness and moisture to the fish when served alongside it.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the fish's flavour during the soak.

The step that matters

Rub the gridiron bars with suet. Fish skin and flesh stick to hot bare metal. A fat layer on the bars creates a barrier so the herrings lift off intact after broiling.

Swap the mustard

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (vinegar, parsley, butter, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Broccolifits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Mustardthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against vinegar, parsley, butter, lemon. 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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