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Eggs with Herring

A fried egg mixture with minced herring, served on toast with lemon slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Eggs with Herring

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Beat the eggs in a bowl.

  2. Add cayenne, parsley, and green onion to the eggs.

  3. Bone and mince the red herring finely, then mix the minced herring into the egg mixture.

Cook and serve

  1. In a saucepan, heat butter or salad oil.

  2. Pour the egg and herring mixture into the saucepan and cook until the eggs are set.

  3. Serve on toast with slices of lemon.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  4. Parsley + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Set into a soft structure that holds the dish together when cooked.
Red herring
Supplies the main flavour and savoury body of the dish.
Butter or salad oil
Fat for the pan that keeps the egg mixture from sticking and adds richness.

The step that matters

Cook until the eggs are set. Eggs cooked over heat turn from liquid to firm as their proteins coagulate. Removing them too early leaves them runny, while overcooking makes them dry and rubbery.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, pepper, parsley, butter, lemon):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Spinachfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, pepper, parsley, butter, lemon. 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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