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Baked Herrings

A preserved herring dish baked with wine, vinegar, onions, spices, and cochineal.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Port wine and vinegar work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 598 recipes. Both carry 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol, which smells smoky, clove. The science ↓

Baked Herrings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and dry the herrings without washing them, leaving the roe intact.

  2. Cut off the fins and tail.

Layer and season

  1. Sprinkle the bottom of a jar with cochineal, cayenne pepper, coarse sea salt, mace, and black pepper.

  2. Layer the herrings and finely sliced onions in the jar until filled.

Add liquid and bake

  1. Add the port wine, vinegar, and bay leaf.

  2. Bake in the oven alongside a batch of bread.

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. Port wine + vinegartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together598 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-ethyl-2-methoxyphenol (smoky, clove).

  2. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  3. Onion + vinegartop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,226 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  5. Mace + port winetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together695 recipes

    Shared aroma: linalool (floral, citrus).

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, and their oils and flesh become tender during slow baking.
Port wine
Adds sweetness, depth and colour to the liquid that surrounds the fish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the fish.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften in the layered jar.
Cochineal
Gives the dish its red colour.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Garlicfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, onion, port wine, 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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