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Red Herrings

Large moist red herrings soaked in boiling small‑beer, then heated and finished with butter or oil.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 3 ingredients
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Why it works: Beer and butter work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 680 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Red Herrings

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the herrings open and pour boiling small-beer over them to soak for 1 hour.

  2. Drain the herrings and heat them just until hot over the fire.

  3. Rub cold butter or drizzle salad oil over the herrings while they are heating.

Alternative and roe

  1. Alternatively, split the herrings open without soaking and hang them on a cheese-toaster to brown the soft roe.

  2. If the herrings have hard roe, open the belly, insert a little butter, and close it up again.

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. Beer + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together680 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

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

What each ingredient does

Red herrings
Provide the main fish body and roe, which cook through and take on flavour from the soak and fat.
Small-beer
Soaks the herrings, adding moisture and a mild malty flavour before heating.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the flesh and carries flavour while the herrings heat.

The step that matters

Heating the herrings just until hot. Fish proteins toughen and dry out quickly when overheated, so heating gently until just hot keeps the flesh moist.

“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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