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A Nice Way of Dressing Red Herrings

A broiled fish dish of red herrings coated with butter, egg, breadcrumbs, flour, and white pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

A Nice Way of Dressing Red Herrings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Open the red herrings and remove the tails and heads.

  2. Soak the herrings in hot water for 1 hour, then dry them.

Coat and broil

  1. Mix the warmed butter with the beaten egg.

  2. Pour the mixture over the herrings.

  3. Sprinkle with bread crumbs, flour, and white pepper.

  4. Broil the herrings and serve them very hot.

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. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

Red herrings
The main fish, whose flesh cooks through and firms under the broiler.
Butter
Adds fat and richness and helps the coating brown under heat.
Egg
Binds the butter mixture and sets to hold the coating on the fish.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, browned topping under the broiler.
Flour
Helps the coating absorb the egg mixture and brown evenly.

The step that matters

Broil the herrings and serve them very hot.. Broiler heat is intense and fast, so the coating can scorch before the fish is cooked through. Watch closely, and serve immediately, because the crumb crust softens as it cools.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, egg, bread, flour):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Capersfits better
  3. Parsleyfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, egg, bread, flour. 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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