Name: Salad of Filleted Salted Herrings
Ingredients: 8 soft roes; 2 tablespoons vinegar; 4 tablespoons mayonnaise; onion, finely chopped; parsley, finely chopped; chervil, finely chopped; chives, finely chopped; tarragon, finely chopped; cayenne pepper

Why it works: Chervil and tarragon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 824 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Salad of Filleted Salted Herrings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herring

Remove the fillets from the salted herrings and take off the skins.
Soak the fillets, then trim them.

Make the sauce and serve

Dish the fillets and cover them with a sauce made from the purée of the soft roes moistened with vinegar and mayonnaise.
Season the sauce with finely chopped onion, parsley, chervil, chives, and tarragon, and flavor with cayenne.

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.

Chervil + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together824 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Chervil + chivetop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together370 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together1,563 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).
Chive + tarragontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together589 recipes

Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).
Parsley + cherviltop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together774 recipes

Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

What each ingredient does

Soft roes: Puréed to form the body and creamy texture of the sauce.
Mayonnaise: Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smooth, creamy coating.
Vinegar: Adds acidity that sharpens the flavor and balances the richness of the roes and mayonnaise.
Onion: Contributes sharp, pungent flavor to the sauce.

The step that matters

Puréeing the soft roes into the sauce. The roes must be smooth and evenly moistened with vinegar and mayonnaise, otherwise the sauce turns grainy or lumpy and does not coat the fillets evenly.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (roe, vinegar, parsley, chervil, chive, tarragon, pepper):

Shallotfits better
Lettucefits better
Mustardfits better
Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against roe, vinegar, parsley, chervil, chive, tarragon, pepper. 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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Salad of Filleted Salted Herrings