Appel Herring Fillets in Mushroom Sauce
Mushroom for Improvement
Originally Published: Tuesday, February 28, 2023
Specs
Not to be confused with apple (the fruit) or Apple (the company).Appel’s Appeal
Today I’ll be looking at a bit of an unusual product hailing from Germany. This ready-to-eat dinner solution from Appel is meant to serve as an easy entrée to those short-on-time.
Germany is not the first country that jumps to mind when thinking of large seafood producers, surrounded by land on three sides with access to oceanic ports only on its borders to the north. However, they do utilize their northern waters very efficiently, with port cities like Hamburg strategically placed to ferry goods in and out of the country.
Appel is based in Cuxhaven, a small town on the coast of the North Sea northwest of Hamburg. It has a thriving fishing industry and serves as an important navigational port at the mouth of the Elbe River. The company’s website has a neat gimmick where it will let you see which ocean the fish in your tin was gathered from by entering a six-digit code on the can. Sadly, this feature was offline when I entered my code, but I assume the herrings are from the North Sea.
Mmm… white cream in a tin.Peeling the Appel
The graphics on the tin were very pleasing, with an elegant plating of two herring filets smothered in creamy mushroom sauce. One could only assume the contents will live up to the tin’s promise. Judging by their marketing materials they only recently adopted this new look.
The tin was very easy to open, and the lid came off completely in one pull. If there was a competition for the ease of opening a can this would get a perfect 10. The contents, however, would not score quite as favourably.
A first look at the product did not match the expectations from the art on the tin. While canned foods rarely matched their serving suggestions, the contrast from this could be enough to file a false advertising claim. The sauce looked watery and congealed, and the few tiny mushroom bits looked slimy and anemic. At least the herring fillets looked substantial and solid.
First impressions were not overly positive, but the contents survived flawlessly being poured out onto my dinnerplate.
Poison Appel...? Not Quite
The sauce was first. The mushroom cream sauce managed to reconstitute while being poured onto the plate into something that resembled canned mushroom soup. The first taste of the sauce was surprisingly pleasant. There was a nice creaminess and slipperiness to the sauce that I could expect from a homemade version of the same product. It was very mild and not particularly flavourful but did provide a nice amount of fat and a bit of salty savouriness. The sauce was otherwise a bit underseasoned.
The mushrooms were very sad. I think I there were a total of five small and floppy slices in the can. They tasted almost exactly like mushrooms bits from a can of Campbell’s mushroom soup. Occasionally a sliver of mushroom would find its way onto the fork, but the distribution was fairly uneven. The saving grace was that they provided a bit of interest versus the rest of the amorphous blob that was the sauce.
Served with spicy smashed mini potatoes, garlic butter french beans, and disappointment.Now the fish. The herring had a solid texture that actually held up to cutting with a knife and fork. The first taste surprised me because it was sweet. A second bite confirmed I was not suffering from some weird form of sensory confusion, there was indeed an acidic sweetness to the fish, as if the fillets were pickled first before canning. As someone who frequently stored jars of pickled herring in the fridge the sweetness wasn’t offputting.
My next step was to try the sauce and fish together as a combo, and unfortunately the combo fell short. There’s a noticeable and iconic flavour to herring that is instantly recognizeable, but because the flavour is so distinctive it can override sauces or garnishes that do not match the punch. In this case, the mild mushroom sauce failed to match the funk of the herring. The creaminess in the mushroom sauce was quite a good complement to the sweetly acidic fish in terms of texture, so it wasn’t a complete miss. The extra fat content really helped to round out some of the sharper notes in the fish. The overall experience felt a bit like eating pickled herrings with chunky half-and-half on top.
The texture of the fillet was nice and solid but felt a bit overcooked and flaky. The components individually lacked a lot of depth. Nothing is offensive or concerning, but nothing really stood out on its own either. The cream sauce had a better texture when warmed up, but the flavours didn’t change much. There was no lingering finish on the palate for any unique flavours.
The cream sauce actually goes pretty well with spicy potatoes.Last Bite
While browsing Appel’s website, I discovered many more interesting flavours in their herring product family. They had creamy horseradish, dill and herbs, piri-mango, and many others, all seemingly bolder and more audacious than the mushroom cream sauce. Alas, most of these flavours were not available to me.
I don’t think this is a bad product, but it is a bit bland with very little to talk about in terms of flavours or textures. The quality of the ingredients is high, but the execution is a bit lackluster. I think the sweetness in the fillet and underseasoning the sauce are the major negatives that plagued this experience. I think the sweeter style herring would thrive with a bolder sauce. I am not counting out Appel products, in fact I look forward to trying some of their other flavours, but I will likely give the mushroom version a pass in the future.
Even though this product failed to secure a Yum rating, I think it’s very very close, so close that I’m not willing to give it an outright Chum rating.