Skip to main content
Main

To Dress Red Herrings

Red herrings are soaked in boiling small beer, then buttered and served with egg sauce and mashed potatoes.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Butter and potato are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,456 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Dress Red Herrings

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the herrings open and pour boiling small beer over them.

  2. Let them soak for half an hour, then drain them dry.

Cook and serve

  1. Heat them just through before the fire.

  2. Rub cold butter over the herrings and serve.

  3. Serve with egg sauce and 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.

  1. Butter + potatotop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,456 recipes

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

  2. Beer + potatotop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  3. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Beer + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together680 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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

Large red herrings
Form the main protein that is soaked, heated and eaten as the dish.
Boiling small-beer
Soaks the herrings, flavouring them and adding moisture before heating.
Cold butter
Rubbed over the hot herrings to add richness and fat to the finished dish.
Egg-sauce
Adds a creamy, rich accompaniment that balances the savoury fish.
Mashed potatoes
Provides a soft, starchy side that complements the herrings.

The step that matters

Heat them just through before the fire. Herrings are delicate and dry out or toughen when overheated, so gentle heating only until warmed through keeps them moist and tender.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beer, butter, egg, sauce):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Mustardfits about as well
  3. Shallotfits about as well
  4. Potatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beer, butter, egg, sauce. 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

Potato CroquettesPotato Croquettes255 recipesPotato RollsPotato Rolls78 recipesPotato ChipsPotato Chips53 recipesSweet Potato CroquettesSweet Potato Croquettes53 recipes