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Pickled Fish

A simple pickled herring prepared with peppercorns, bay leaves, herbs, cloves, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Pickled Fish

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean the herrings and remove the heads.

Pickle

  1. In a pot, layer the herrings with peppercorns, bay leaves, parsley, thyme, fennel, and cloves.

  2. Pour the vinegar over the layered ingredients.

  3. Cover and let it sit for a few days before serving.

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. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Thyme + fenneltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together337 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Parsley + fenneltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together625 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  4. Thyme + clovetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together4,108 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Fennel + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together350 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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, becoming firm and opaque as they cure in the acidic brine.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the fish and gives the pickled sharpness.
Bay leaves
Add aromatic flavour that infuses into the fish during pickling.
Peppercorns
Add a mild, warm pungency that seasons the fish as it pickles.

The step that matters

Letting the herrings sit for a few days. Acid from the vinegar needs time to penetrate the fish and firm its flesh. Serving too early leaves the fish soft and under-seasoned, so the pickling is incomplete.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (parsley, thyme, fennel, vinegar):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Dillfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against parsley, thyme, fennel, 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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