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Herring and Anchovy Paste

A paste made by soaking herring or anchovies, removing bones and skins, then pounding with butter and cayenne pepper.

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 ↓

Herring and Anchovy Paste

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Soak the herring or anchovies in warm beer or water.

  2. Remove all bones and skins from the fish.

Make the paste

  1. Pound the fish with a small quantity of butter and some cayenne pepper.

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).

  2. Beer + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together940 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

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

What each ingredient does

Herring or anchovies
Provides the main fish flavour and the savoury base of the paste.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, giving the pounded fish a smooth, spreadable texture.
Cayenne pepper
Adds heat and a sharp, spicy aroma to the paste.

The step that matters

Removing all bones and skins. Any remaining bones or skin will stay hard or leathery after pounding and spoil the smooth texture of the paste. Careful removal ensures the finished spread is even and pleasant to eat.

“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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