Smoked herring

Hareng saur

What it is

Saur has nothing to do with sauce: it comes from the Middle Dutch soor, dried. The oldest French record of the trade is a deed of 1230 in which the abbey of Fécamp grants a neighbouring commune a tree or two from its wood, to smoke herring with.

In the kitchen

Skin and fillet it, then two hours in milk or a night in oil with bay and sliced onion — milk pulls the salt fastest, oil keeps it and makes it supple. Untreated it will out-salt everything else on the plate.

Goes with

Potato Onion Olive oil Bay leaf Black pepper Apple Crème fraîche

Same species

Matjes herring Herring Kazunoko Herring milt

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