Skip to main content
Main

Curried Fresh Herrings

A dish of fresh herrings simmered in a curry‑spiced sauce with onion, parsley, bay leaf, wine, and egg yolk.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Curried Fresh Herrings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herrings

  1. Draw and clean the herrings.

  2. Wash the soft roes.

  3. Blanch the roes in water with a little vinegar or lemon juice.

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the sliced onion in butter in a flat stewpan.

  2. Sprinkle curry powder into the pan. Stir for 2-3 minutes.

  3. Add chopped parsley, bay leaf, salt, white wine, and fish broth.

  4. Place the herrings side by side in the stewpan, ensuring they are covered with liquid.

  5. Boil for 2-3 minutes.

  6. Cover and let sit off the heat for 10 minutes.

  7. Remove the herrings with a skimmer.

Finish and serve

  1. Arrange them with the roes on a hot dish.

  2. Thicken the sauce with the egg yolks.

  3. Strain the sauce over the fish.

  4. Serve.

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 + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  2. Onion + white winetop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,535 recipes

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

  3. White wine + fishtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-pentanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Parsley + white winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,890 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

  5. Parsley + fishtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,341 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 gently in the curried liquid until tender.
Curry powder
Supplies the warm, aromatic spice flavour that defines the sauce.
Egg yolks
Thicken the strained sauce into a smooth, rich coating through gentle heating.
White wine
Adds acidity to the cooking liquid, balancing the richness of the fish and butter.
Onion
Frying in butter builds a sweet, savoury base for the sauce.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with the egg yolks. Egg yolks set when heated, but if the sauce gets too hot they can scramble and turn grainy. Add them off the heat or over very gentle heat, stirring constantly, so the sauce becomes smooth and lightly thickened.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, white wine, fish, egg):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, white wine, fish, egg. 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

Fried FishFried Fish120 recipesFish CroquettesFish Croquettes81 recipesScalloped CodScalloped Cod69 recipesBroiled FishBroiled Fish68 recipes