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Matelote of Fresh Herrings

A French-style herring stew with butter, flour, parsley, shallots, red wine, fried onions, mushrooms, and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 3,737 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Matelote of Fresh Herrings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herrings

  1. Gut the herrings through the gill opening and cut off the heads and tails.

  2. Divide each herring lengthwise into two fillets, removing the bones.

Cook

  1. In a frying pan, melt a small quantity of butter and stir in enough flour to nearly absorb it. Add chopped parsley and shallots to the pan.

  2. Lay the herrings in the pan and sprinkle with red wine. Cook over high heat until done.

Serve

  1. Transfer to a hot dish and top with fried onions and mushrooms. Garnish with fried breadcrumbs and serve hot.

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. Parsley + shallottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,737 recipes

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

  2. Shallot + mushroomtop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,982 recipes

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

  3. Flour + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Butter + mushroomtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,525 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

  5. Shallot + oniontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,431 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
Provide the main flesh of the dish, cooking quickly and taking on the sauce's flavour.
Butter
Carries flavour and enriches the pan, helping the flour form a smooth base.
Flour
Mixed with butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Red wine
Adds acidity and depth, reducing in the pan to flavour the sauce.
Shallots
Add a mild, sweet onion flavour that softens into the sauce.

The step that matters

Cook over high heat until done. Herring fillets are thin and cook fast; over-cooking dries and toughens the flesh, while the wine needs enough heat to reduce into a sauce rather than stew the fish.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, flour, parsley, shallot, red wine, mushroom):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, parsley, shallot, red wine, mushroom. 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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