Name: Red Herrings or Yarmouth Bloaters
Ingredients: 2 red herrings or Yarmouth bloaters; 2 tablespoons butter; 2 blades of pounded mace; Salt to taste; Cayenne pepper to taste; Fine bread crumbs; Lemon juice; Fried parsley for garnish; Lemon wedges for garnish

Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Red Herrings or Yarmouth Bloaters

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Wash and dry the fish thoroughly with a cloth.
Make incisions in the skin across the fish.
Arrange the fish in a flat baking dish.

Bake

Cover the fish with fine bread crumbs and dot with butter.
Season with salt and cayenne.
Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 15 minutes.

Serve

Before serving, add a squeeze of lemon juice and garnish with fried parsley and lemon wedges.

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.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together27,232 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).
Mace + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,268 recipes

Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

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

What each ingredient does

Red herrings or yarmouth bloaters: Provide the main fish, whose oily flesh stays moist and rich under heat.
Butter: Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the crumbs brown in the oven.
Fine bread crumbs: Form a crisp, browned crust over the fish while it bakes.
Pounded mace: Adds a warm, aromatic spice flavour to the fish.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich, oily fish at the end.

The step that matters

Washing and drying the fish thoroughly. Surface moisture left on the fish turns to steam in the oven and stops the bread crumbs from crisping and browning. Drying the skin well lets the crust set properly.

Swap the mace

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

Thymefits better
Marjoramfits better
Sagefits better
Macethe original

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

Brown Bread461 recipes

Lemon Sauce236 recipes

White Bread80 recipes

Bread Omelette60 recipes

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Red Herrings or Yarmouth Bloaters