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Potted Herring

A preserved herring dish made by layering fish with spices, vinegar, and a flour crust, then baking.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and ginger match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,038 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potted Herring

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Scrape and wash the herring, then lay them in coarse sea salt for 3 hours.

  2. Cut pieces of fish to fit an earthen jar.

Pack and season

  1. Season each layer of fish with salt, peppercorns, cloves, mace, and ground ginger.

  2. Pack the fish tightly in the jar.

  3. Fill the jar with ¾ cup vinegar and ¼ cup water.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the top with a stiff crust made of flour and water.

  2. Bake gently at 300°F (150°C) for 5 hours.

  3. Let cool and serve cold.

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. Clove + gingertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,038 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Mace + gingertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,152 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Clove + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,671 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Ginger + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,564 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
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and flaky during slow baking.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the fish.
Black peppercorns
Adds warm, pungent aroma that flavours the fish during slow cooking.
Cloves
Contribute warm, aromatic spice that penetrates the fish during baking.
Mace
Adds a delicate, warm aroma that complements the fish.
Ground ginger
Adds warm, aromatic spice that balances the richness of the fish.

The step that matters

Baking gently at low heat. Slow, gentle heat lets the bones and flesh soften fully without drying or breaking the fish apart. Too high a temperature can toughen the flesh and scorch the crust before the fish is tender.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, ginger, vinegar, flour):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Cardamomfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, ginger, vinegar, flour. 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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