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To Pickle or Bake Herrings

A method of pickling herring with spices and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Clove and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

To Pickle or Bake Herrings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herring

  1. Scale and wash the herring clean.

  2. Cut off the heads and remove the roes, or wash them clean and put them back in.

  3. Season with a pinch of mace, cloves, a little beaten pepper, and coarse sea salt.

Pickle and set

  1. Layer the herring in a deep pan, placing two or three bay leaves between each layer.

  2. Mix half vinegar and half water, then pour over the herring.

  3. Cover the pan tightly with brown paper and place it in the oven.

  4. Let it stand until cold.

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. Clove + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  2. Mace + clovetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  3. Pepper + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Clove + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Mace + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together12,257 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

Mace and pepper barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 12,257 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

Herring
The main fish, which firms up and turns opaque as the vinegar and gentle heat set its flesh.
Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the fish and gives the pickled sharp flavour.
Bay leaves
Add a subtle aromatic herbal note that carries through the pickling liquid into the fish.

The step that matters

Covering the pan tightly before baking. A tight cover with brown paper traps steam so the fish cooks gently and evenly in the liquid. Letting it escape can leave the surface dry and the flesh unevenly cooked.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (clove, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Allspicefits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Cinnamonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against clove, pepper, vinegar. 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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