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Red Herrings

Red herrings are fish soaked in small beer, then heated and served with butter or salad oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Beer and butter work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 680 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Red Herrings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the herrings open and pour boiling small beer over them to soak for 1 hour.

  2. Drain the herrings and heat them just until hot over the fire.

Finish and serve

  1. Rub cold butter or drizzle a small amount of salad oil over the herrings before serving.

  2. Alternatively, split the herrings open without soaking and hang them on a cheese-toaster to brown the soft roe.

  3. If the roe is hard, open the belly carefully and insert a little butter, then close it to melt the butter.

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. Beer + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together680 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Red herrings
Provide the main fish body, which is moist and firm enough to hold up to soaking and gentle heating.
Small beer
Soaks into the fish, adding moisture and a mild, malty flavour before heating.
Butter
Adds richness and a silky coating that melts into the fish, adding fat and flavour.

The step that matters

Heating the herrings just until hot. Fish proteins toughen and dry out quickly when overheated, so heating only until hot keeps the flesh moist and tender.

“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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