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Cold Storage Kippers

Kippers served cold with cold water, pepper, and butter, briefly warmed in a slow oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Cold Storage Kippers

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Pour cold water over the kippers.

  2. Place the kippers in a fireproof dish while still wet.

  3. Sprinkle the kippers with pepper.

  4. Add small dabs of butter to the kippers.

  5. Cover the dish.

Cook and serve

  1. Cook in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for about five minutes.

  2. Serve in the same dish.

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Kippers
Provide the main fish, which cooks gently in steam under the cover.
Cold water
Wets the kippers so they steam rather than dry out in the oven.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour and keeping the fish moist.

The step that matters

Cover the dish. The lid traps steam around the wet kippers, gently heating them through and keeping the flesh moist. Leaving the dish uncovered lets moisture escape, so the fish can dry out and toughen in the slow oven.

“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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