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Baked Fresh Herrings

A baked dish of fresh herrings seasoned with pepper, salt, mustard, allspice, vinegar, and bay leaves.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and allspice match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,928 recipes. Both carry methyleugenol, which smells clove, spice. The science ↓

Baked Fresh Herrings

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the herrings

  1. Scrape and wash the herrings well.

  2. Cut off the heads and split the bodies in half, removing the bones.

  3. Rub each half with pepper, salt, mustard, and allspice.

  4. Roll each half separately, leaving the tail outwards.

Pack and bake

  1. Pack the rolled herrings in a china jar.

  2. Pound the soft roes and mix with vinegar and a little water.

  3. Pour the mixture over the herrings.

  4. Place bay leaves on top and bake in a 300°F (150°C) oven for about 1 hour.

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. Mustard + allspicetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,928 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  2. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  3. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + mustardtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  5. Allspice + vinegartop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,548 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methylbutyl acetate (fruit).

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, cooking into tender, flaky flesh during slow baking.
Vinegar
Acidity that softens the fish and gives the finished dish its sharp, tangy flavour.
Soft roes (in the method)
Pounded into the liquid, they add richness and body to the sauce around the fish.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice that flavours the fish during the rubbing and soaking.

The step that matters

Baking in the vinegar mixture. Vinegar acts on the fish proteins and gently firms and preserves the flesh, while the low oven heat cooks it slowly. Baking too hot or too long can make the herring dry and tough, so the oven temperature and time should be kept as recorded.

Swap the allspice

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

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Dillfits about as well
  3. Capersfits about as well
  4. Allspicethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, mustard, 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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