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To Broil Herrings

A dish of herrings broiled and served with a sauce made from their heads, small beer, pepper, onion, butter, flour, and mustard.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Onion and mustard match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

To Broil Herrings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Scale and gut the herrings, then wash and dry them thoroughly.

  2. Dust the herrings with flour.

Make the sauce

  1. Mash the heads of the herrings and boil them in small beer or ale with whole pepper and onion for 15 minutes.

  2. Strain the mixture, then thicken it with butter and flour, adding mustard to taste.

Cook and serve

  1. Broil the herrings until cooked.

  2. Serve the broiled herrings on a plate with the sauce in a separate dish.

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. Onion + mustardtop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  2. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Beer + mustardtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together314 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Herrings
Form the main body of the dish, cooking to a tender, flaky texture under the broiler.
Flour
Dusts the fish and thickens the sauce together with butter, giving it body.
Butter
Enriches the sauce and helps thicken it with flour, adding richness and smooth texture.
Small beer or ale
Liquid base for the sauce, extracting flavour from the fish heads, pepper and onion.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that balances the richness of the butter sauce.

The step that matters

Broil the herrings until cooked. Fish is dense and cooks quickly, so overcooking dries the flesh and makes it tough. Watch for the flesh turning opaque and flaking easily.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter, beer, pepper, mustard):

  1. Horseradishfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Chivefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter, beer, pepper, mustard. 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.

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