Skip to main content
Main

Fresh Herrings

Fresh herrings broiled over a bright fire and served with a hot butter, flour and mustard sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Mustard and vinegar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,067 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fresh Herrings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove the heads and clean the herrings thoroughly.

Broil the herrings

  1. Place them on a grill over a bright fire and broil for 10 to 12 minutes, depending on size.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, knead 2 teaspoons of baked flour and 1 teaspoon of mustard flour with 3 ounces of butter.

  2. Stir this mixture into ½ cup of boiling water and boil for 5 minutes.

  3. Add 1 teaspoon of vinegar and serve the sauce hot with the herrings.

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. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + mustardtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,066 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + mustardtop 22% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,003 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Herrings
Provide the main fish, which cooks quickly over high heat and carries the dish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that emulsifies with the flour and water into a smooth sauce.
Baked flour
Thickens the sauce as it boils with the butter and water.
Mustard flour
Adds sharp, pungent mustard flavour to the butter sauce.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and mustard sauce.

The step that matters

Broiling the herrings over a bright fire. Fish is delicate and dries out or sticks if overcooked or under-timed. Size changes how fast the flesh cooks through, so the 10 to 12 minute range must be checked against the fish in front of you.

Swap the mustard

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, vinegar. 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes