Skip to main content
Starter

Marinaded Herrings a LA Ravigote

A cold appetizer of marinated herring fillets topped with egg yolk and white, parsley, gherkin, cucumber salad, and caviar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Parsley and cucumber match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,564 recipes. Both carry trans-2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Marinaded Herrings a LA Ravigote

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut marinated herring fillets into rounds about 1¼ inches in diameter.

  2. Place the rounds on a plate and drizzle with salad oil.

Garnish

  1. Mask each round alternately with the yolk and white of hard‑boiled eggs that have been passed through a sieve.

  2. Sprinkle with finely chopped fresh parsley.

  3. Arrange on slices of hard‑boiled egg sprinkled with chopped French gherkin.

  4. In the center of each, place a little cucumber salad mixed with oil and salt.

  5. Top with a small ball of caviar and serve on small plates for hors d’oeuvre.

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. Parsley + cucumbertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,564 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Egg + caviartop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together101 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  3. Cucumber + caviartop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together31 recipes

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

  4. Egg + parsleytop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Egg + cucumbertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,346 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Marinaded fillets of herrings
Forms the main body of each round and provides the savory, briny flavor.
Hard-boiled eggs
Yolk and white add a soft, creamy texture and mild richness to the garnish.
Caviar
Adds a salty, rich burst of flavor as the finishing topping.
Cucumber salad
Adds a cool, crisp, slightly acidic contrast to the rich herring and eggs.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, cucumber, caviar):

  1. Capersfits better
  2. Dillfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, cucumber, caviar. 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.

You might also like

Deviled OystersDeviled Oysters25 recipes