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Salad

An Excellent Herring Salad

A salad of herring with beetroot, cold boiled potatoes, pickled gherkins, apple and hard-boiled egg, dressed with a sauce of egg yolk, oil, vinegar and sour cream.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Beetroot and potato match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and 330 recipes mention both. Both carry 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells green bell pepper, earthy. The science ↓

An Excellent Herring Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herring

  1. Soak the herring.

  2. Skin the herring.

  3. Split the herring.

  4. Lay the two sides of the herring on a dish.

  5. Slice the herring slopingly.

Assemble the salad

  1. Arrange slices of beetroot, cold boiled potatoes, and pickled gherkins over the fish.

  2. Add chopped apples, minced yolks and whites of hard-boiled eggs, and any other decorative ingredients.

  3. Place these ingredients in small heaps of contrasting colors on the salad.

  4. Garnish with curled celery leaves or parsley around the bowl.

Make the dressing

  1. Rub the yolk of one hard-boiled egg smooth with salt.

  2. Add oil and vinegar to the egg yolk.

  3. Dilute the egg yolk mixture with thick sour cream.

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 aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Beetroot + potatotop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together330 recipes

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

  2. Beetroot + celerytop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together652 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Potato + celerytop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,047 recipes

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

  4. Potato + beeftop 8% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  5. Apple + celerytop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together1,155 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-vinylphenol (clove, smoky).

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

What each ingredient does

Norway herring
Forms the main body of the salad and supplies its characteristic savoury, fishy flavour.
Beetroot
Adds sweet, earthy flavour and a deep red colour that contrasts with the pale fish.
Cold boiled potatoes
Provide bulk and a soft, starchy texture that balances the rich fish and dressing.
Sharp apples
Add tartness and a crisp texture that cuts through the richness of the herring and cream.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed into a smooth base that gives the dressing body and a creamy, rich texture.
Thick sour cream
Adds creaminess and moisture to the dressing, with a mild tang that softens the vinegar.

The step that matters

Dilute the egg yolk mixture with thick sour cream.. The yolk, oil and vinegar form a fragile emulsion. Adding the cream steadily and stirring well keeps the dressing smooth and stops it splitting or turning grainy.

Flavor stand-ins for the apple

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beetroot, potato, egg, vinegar, cream, celery, beef):

  1. Avocadobetter flavor fit
  2. Lemonbetter flavor fit
  3. Limebetter flavor fit
  4. Applethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against beetroot, potato, egg, vinegar, cream, celery, beef. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“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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