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Baked Shad with Roe Sauce

A baked shad stuffed with bread crumbs and herbs, topped with tomato slices and served with a sauce made from roe, sherry, and Worcestershire.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 20 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked Shad with Roe Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Remove the roe from the shad, then clean, wash, and dry the fish.

  2. Make stuffing by mixing bread crumbs, melted butter, grated onion, chopped parsley, chopped tomato, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper.

  3. Stuff the fish, sew it closed, and place it in a baking pan.

  4. Top the fish with slices of raw tomato and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Bake the fish

  1. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for one hour, basting frequently with butter and hot water.

  2. Before removing from the oven, pour over the fish a mixture of sherry, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, and cayenne.

Make the roe sauce

  1. For the sauce, parboil the roe in salted water with cloves, bay leaf, and parsley.

  2. Remove the skin from the roe and mash it finely.

  3. Melt butter, stir in tomato sauce, lemon juice, and sherry, and cook for five minutes.

  4. Add the mashed roe to the sauce and serve with the fish.

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 + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  3. Tomato + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Onion + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,633 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Parsley + tomatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,398 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

What each ingredient does

Shad
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole so it stays moist while baking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and juices in the stuffing, giving it a moist, tender body.
Melted butter
Adds fat that keeps the fish and stuffing moist and promotes gentle browning.
Roe
Gives the sauce its rich, creamy body when mashed and cooked into it.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the baste and the sauce.
Tomato
Adds moisture and mild acidity to the stuffing and the topping.

The step that matters

Basting during the bake. Fish is lean and dries out quickly in dry oven heat. Frequent basting with butter and hot water coats the surface with fat and moisture, keeping the flesh tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, parsley, tomato, sauce, pepper, sherry):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Shallotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, parsley, tomato, sauce, pepper, sherry. 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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