Skip to main content
Main

Pickled Herrings

A preserved fish dish made by baking herrings in vinegar and water with pepper and bay leaf.

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

Why it works: Vinegar and pepper are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,814 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Pickled Herrings

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the herrings

  1. Clean and split the herrings open.

  2. Cut off the head and remove the backbone.

  3. Roll the herrings from the head to the tail.

  4. Lay the rolled herrings in a pie dish.

Pickle and bake

  1. Cover with equal parts vinegar and water.

  2. Add a little pepper and a bay leaf.

  3. Cover and bake slowly at 300°F (150°C) for 2 hours.

Serve

  1. Serve cold with the strained liquor over them.

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. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

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

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, becoming tender and firm as they bake slowly in the liquid.
Vinegar
Provides acidity that preserves the fish and gives the pickled, sharp flavour.
Water
Dilutes the vinegar so the pickling liquid is less harsh while still acidic.
Bay leaf
Adds a subtle aromatic, herbal note to the pickling liquor.

The step that matters

Bake slowly and covered. Low, gentle heat with the dish covered cooks the fish through and softens its flesh without breaking it apart. Too high a heat would toughen and dry the herring before the liquid has penetrated.

“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

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes