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Red Herrings

A dish of red herrings soaked in boiling small beer, then heated and rubbed with cold butter or salad oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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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

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the herrings open and pour boiling small beer over them to soak for 1 hour.

  2. Drain the herrings and heat them just until hot over the fire.

Finish and serve

  1. Rub cold butter over the herrings before serving.

  2. Alternatively, use a little salad oil while heating them.

  3. For a different method, split the herrings open without soaking and hang them on a cheese toaster to brown the soft roe.

  4. If the roe is hard, open the belly and insert a little butter, then close it to melt the butter.

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. Beer + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together680 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Red herrings
Provide the oily, strongly flavoured fish that is softened and warmed through.
Small beer
Soaks the herrings, adding moisture and a mild malty flavour.
Cold butter
Adds richness and fat, giving a smooth, buttery finish to the fish.

The step that matters

Heating the herrings just until hot. Heating gently only until hot keeps the flesh moist and tender; overheating dries out the fish and toughens the proteins.

“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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