Name: To Dress Red Herrings
Ingredients: Red herrings; butter; mustard; new milk; boiling small beer; egg-sauce or mashed potatoes

Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Dress Red Herrings

Ingredients

Directions

Soak red herrings in boiling water.
Toast them before the fire until done.
Rub butter over them until absorbed.
If they have hard roes, open gently, insert butter, and close.
Serve with mustard as a relish.
If too salty, soak in new milk before dressing.
For another method, soak large herrings in boiling small beer for 30 minutes.
Drain and heat them before the fire.
Rub with cold butter and serve with egg-sauce or mashed potatoes.

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.

Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together81,283 recipes

Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).
Mustard + beertop 11% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together314 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Milk + beertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together298 recipes

Shared aroma: methyl 2-methylbutyrate (fruity, apple).
Butter + beertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together680 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together118,967 recipes

Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).