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Baked Potatoes with Salt Herrings, Berlin Style

A layered baked potato dish with salt herring, cream sauce, onions, and bread crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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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 ↓

Baked Potatoes with Salt Herrings, Berlin Style

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

  1. Boil the potatoes until tender, then slice and season with salt.

  2. Wash, skin, and bone the herrings, then cut into scallops and soak in milk.

  3. Finely slice the onions and sauté in butter over low heat until soft but not browned.

Make the sauce

  1. Stir in the flour and cook for a few minutes, then gradually add cream or boiled milk to create a thick sauce.

  2. Season the sauce with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and meat glaze, then cook slowly for 20 minutes.

  3. Pass the sauce through a fine sieve.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a deep baking dish and layer the sliced potatoes, sauce, and scalloped herring alternately until full, finishing with potatoes on top.

  2. Cover the top layer with sauce, sprinkle with bread crumbs, and dot with small pieces of butter.

  3. Bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for 20 minutes.

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. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together13,015 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Potato + nutmegtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Potatoes
Form the bulk of the dish and, once baked, soften into a tender, moist layer.
Herrings
Provide the main savoury flavour and a firm, flaky texture as they cook.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften slowly in butter without browning.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour to the onions, and browns the topping when dotted over the dish.
Flour
Thickens the milk or cream into a smooth sauce that binds the layers together.
Cream or boiled milk
Forms the liquid base of the sauce, adding moisture and richness.

The step that matters

Sieving the sauce. Passing the sauce through a fine sieve removes lumps and onion bits, so the flour-thickened sauce stays smooth and evenly coats the layers instead of turning grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (potato, milk, butter, flour, cream, pepper, nutmeg):

  1. Spinachfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against potato, milk, butter, flour, cream, pepper, nutmeg. 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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