Name: Fresh Herrings
Ingredients: full roe herrings; butter; pepper; coarse sea salt; parsley

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Fresh Herrings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herring

Remove the head, scale, and wash the herrings.
Cut down the front from head to tail and remove the roe and backbone.
Lay the fish flat on a cloth and dry them.

Stuff and roll

Place a small piece of butter, pepper, and salt inside the fish with the roe.
Roll the fish from head to tail, leaving the tail standing up, and tie them.

Bake and serve

Bake for 30 minutes.
Garnish with parsley.
Serve cold for a pretty presentation.

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.

Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Roe + buttertop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together442 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).
Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together85,593 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Roe + parsleytop 22% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together259 recipes

Shared aroma: eugenol (clove, spicy).

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

What each ingredient does

Full roe herrings: Form the main body of the dish and carry the roe, which becomes the filling.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, keeping the fish moist as it bakes.
Pepper: Adds a sharp, aromatic bite that seasons the fish and roe.

“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.