Why it works: Flour and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 19% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 50,459 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓
Fried Fresh Herrings
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Wash the herrings in salt and water, then dry them thoroughly with a clean cloth.
Cut off the heads, tails, and fins, then make three shallow incisions down each side of the fish.
Sprinkle the herrings with salt and pepper, ensuring it gets into the cuts.
Roll the herrings in flour until well coated.
Fry and serve
Heat the frying fat until boiling, then reduce the heat slightly to maintain a gentle boil.
Fry the herrings for about 10 minutes, or until they are a nice golden brown.
Remove the herrings and place them on a dish lined with paper, garnishing with fresh parsley.
Serve immediately while very hot.
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.
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Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together50,459 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs
What each ingredient does
- Herrings
- Form the main body of the dish, cooked whole so the flesh stays moist inside.
- Flour
- Coats the fish so the surface crisps and browns evenly in the hot fat.
- Frying fat
- Conducts heat to cook the fish quickly and browns the flour coating.
- Salt
- Seasons the fish through the cuts and helps draw out surface moisture.
The step that matters
Drying the herrings before flouring. Surface moisture left on the fish turns to steam in the hot fat and makes the flour coating soggy and prone to sticking. Thorough drying lets the coating crisp and brown.
“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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