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Salad

Herring Salad

A salad of smoked herring, onion, eggs, potato, parsley, salt, pepper, vinegar, and oil, garnished with beets and capers.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and capers match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,550 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Herring Salad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the herring

  1. Heat the smoked herring on each side for 30 seconds.

  2. Remove the skin, heads, and bones, then chop the herring into small square pieces.

Make the salad

  1. In a salad bowl, combine the herring, hashed onion, chopped eggs, and chopped potato.

  2. Add the chopped parsley, salt, pepper, vinegar, and oil, then mix well.

  3. Decorate with sliced beets and capers if desired.

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 + caperstop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,550 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

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

  4. Potato + parsleytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  5. Onion + caperstop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

What each ingredient does

Smoked herring
Provides the main flavour and the substance of the salad.
Hard boiled eggs
Add body and a soft, creamy texture to the mixture.
Potato
Adds bulk and a soft texture that holds the salad together.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour of the fish.
Oil
Adds fat and moisture, rounding out the sharpness of the vinegar.

The step that matters

Chop the herring into small, even pieces after removing skin and bones. Bones and skin left in the fish are unpleasant to eat and can be a choking hazard. Small, even pieces distribute the fish evenly through the salad and blend its flavour with the other ingredients.

Swap the capers

The recipe marks capers as optional. How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (onion, egg, potato, parsley, pepper, vinegar):

  1. Dillfits better
  2. Garlicfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Capersthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against onion, egg, potato, parsley, 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.

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