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Baked Shad

A whole shad stuffed with bread crumbs, pork, onion, herbs, and baked with sweet salt pork.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Summer savory and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 241 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Baked Shad

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

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Make a stuffing by mixing bread crumbs, chopped pork, onion, summer savory, parsley, and seasoning.

Stuff and bake

  1. Fill the cleaned shad with the stuffing and sew it up.

  2. In a hot baking pan, place a slice of sweet salt pork, then lay the stuffed shad on top and add bay leaves if using.

  3. Bake for one hour, basting with its own juices.

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. Summer savory + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Onion + summer savorytop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together299 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  4. Pork + oniontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together18,214 recipes

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

  5. Pork + summer savorytop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together239 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

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

What each ingredient does

Shad
Serves as the main fish, cooked whole so the stuffing and juices stay with it.
Bread crumbs
Absorb juices and hold the stuffing together, keeping it moist rather than dense.
Chopped pork
Adds fat to the stuffing, which keeps the mild fish moist and adds savory flavor.
Sweet salt pork
Melts in the hot pan, adding fat that helps the fish brown and stay moist.

The step that matters

Basting with its own juices. Fish is lean and dries out quickly in the oven. Spooning the pan juices back over it during the hour of baking keeps the flesh moist and adds flavor.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, pork, summer savory, parsley):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pork, summer savory, parsley. 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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