Skip to main content
Main

Pickled Herrings

A preserved herring dish pickled in vinegar, water, pepper, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 17,451 recipes. Both carry ethyl octanoate, which smells fruity, wine. The science ↓

Pickled Herrings

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the herrings

  1. Remove all bones from the herrings by cutting them from tail to head on the underside.

  2. Pass your finger along the bone on each side without breaking the back.

  3. Spread the herrings flat and sprinkle the inside with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  4. Roll the herrings with the skin outside and place them in a deep dish.

Pickle and bake

  1. Pour enough vinegar and water to half cover the herrings.

  2. Add a few peppercorns and cloves, cover closely, and cook in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

  3. Serve cold.

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. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

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

  3. Vinegar + clovetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,386 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Herrings
Provide the flesh that is cooked and softened in the pickling liquid.
Vinegar
Acidity that preserves the fish and gives the pickled sharpness.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the fish and draws out moisture from its flesh.

The step that matters

Cover closely while baking. Keeping the dish tightly covered traps steam around the fish, so it cooks gently and evenly in the liquid instead of drying at the surface.

Swap the clove

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, 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.

You might also like

Tomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipesYorkshire PuddingYorkshire Pudding264 recipes