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Herrings Grilled with Mustard Sauce

Grilled herrings served with a mustard sauce made from butter, flour, mustard, vinegar, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Mustard and onion match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 6% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,259 recipes. Both carry 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, which smells earthy, pea. The science ↓

Herrings Grilled with Mustard Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. Fry the onion in the butter until lightly browned.

  2. Add the flour and mustard.

  3. Stir in the vinegar and water.

  4. Bring the mixture to a boil.

  5. Simmer gently for about 15 minutes.

Prepare and grill the herrings

  1. Wipe and dry the herrings.

  2. Remove the heads.

  3. Score them across the back and sides, avoiding the roe.

  4. Sprinkle the herrings with salt and pepper.

  5. Grill over a clear fire for 10 to 15 minutes.

Serve

  1. Place the herrings on a hot dish.

  2. Strain the sauce around them.

  3. Serve.

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. Mustard + oniontop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,259 recipes

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

  2. Mustard + vinegartop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together14,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Mustard + peppertop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together15,430 recipes

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Butter
Fat that carries the onion flavour and browns lightly for a rich base.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the fish instead of running off.
Mustard
Adds sharp, pungent flavour that cuts through the richness of the herring.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that brightens the sauce and balances the fatty fish.
Onion
Softens and browns in butter, adding sweetness and savoury depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmer the sauce gently. Once the flour is added, a hard boil can leave the sauce lumpy or thin, since starch thickens best when heated steadily and stirred. A gentle simmer lets the flour cook fully and the sauce thicken smoothly.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Horseradishfits better
  3. Radishfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, flour, mustard, vinegar, pepper. 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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