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How to Cook Fresh Herring to Serve Cold

A baked herring dish finished with butter, vinegar, and water, served cold.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

How to Cook Fresh Herring to Serve Cold

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove bones from the herring.

  2. Sprinkle the fish with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  3. Roll the fish in flour.

Assemble and bake

  1. Butter a baking dish generously.

  2. Place the rolled fish closely together in the dish and add pieces of butter on top.

  3. Mix half vinegar and half water, then pour over the fish.

  4. Bake until the liquid is fully absorbed.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  3. Pepper + flourtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  5. Butter + vinegartop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,513 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

Flour and butter 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

Flour
Forms a light coating that helps the fish brown and holds seasoning.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and promotes browning in the baking dish.
Vinegar
Adds acidity that gives the sauce a sharp, bright taste.

The step that matters

Baking until the liquid is fully absorbed. Baking must continue until the vinegar and water mixture is absorbed. Stopping early leaves excess liquid, while overbaking can dry the fish and make it tough.

“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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