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Potted Herring

A preserved herring dish seasoned with salt, spices, and vinegar, baked overnight.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Allspice and clove match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 7,874 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Potted Herring

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Clean the herring, wash them well, and wipe them dry.

  2. Rub each herring with coarse sea salt and cayenne pepper.

Pack and cover

  1. In a jar, place a layer of herring, then add grains of allspice, half a dozen cloves, and two or three blades of mace.

  2. Repeat layering until all herring is used.

  3. Cover the herring with cold vinegar.

  4. Tie the jar tightly with several layers of paper.

Bake and rest

  1. Place the jar in a 300°F (150°C) oven after removing the bread and let it sit overnight.

  2. Once cooled, the herring is ready to use.

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. Allspice + clovetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,874 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Pepper + allspicetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,395 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Clove + macetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together8,400 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

  5. Allspice + macetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,189 recipes

    Shared aroma: methyleugenol (clove, spice).

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

What each ingredient does

Herring
Forms the main body of the dish, becoming tender and soft during slow cooking.
Cold vinegar
Adds acidity that sharpens the flavour and helps preserve the fish.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the fish and draws out moisture for a firmer, more preserved texture.
Allspice
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour that infuses the fish as it sits.

The step that matters

Placing the jar in the oven. The oven must be low and the jar tightly sealed so the fish cooks gently and slowly without the liquid boiling hard. Too much heat can break the herring apart and make it dry or tough, while a loose cover lets the vinegar evaporate and the flavours weaken.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, allspice, clove, vinegar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, allspice, clove, vinegar. 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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