Name: Red Herrings
Ingredients: red herrings; beer; butter; pepper

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

red herrings
beer
butter
pepper

Directions

Broil the red herrings until cooked.
Pour hot beer over the herrings, then let it cool.
Drain and wipe the herrings dry.
Heat the herrings thoroughly.
Rub a little butter over the herrings and sprinkle with pepper.

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.

Beer + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together680 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).
Beer + peppertop 16% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together940 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Red herrings: The main fish, which is cooked, soaked in beer, and then reheated.
Beer: Poured over the hot fish to add flavor as it cools.
Butter: Adds fat and richness to the finished fish.

“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.