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Baked Shad

A whole shad seasoned, stuffed, and baked with bread crumbs, parsley, salt pork, and butter, served with lemon, potato balls, and parsley.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Baked Shad

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

  1. Rub the cleaned shad inside and out with coarse sea salt.

  2. Make a dressing by mixing bread crumbs, parsley, salt, pepper, and melted butter.

  3. Stuff the fish with the dressing and sew it up with soft yarn.

  4. Score one side of the fish about two inches apart and insert strips of salt pork into each gash.

  5. Place slices of salt pork on the bottom of a baking dish and rest the fish on top.

  6. Dredge the fish thickly with salt, pepper, and flour.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake in a warm oven at 350°F (175°C) for 15 minutes per pound of fish.

  2. Garnish with lemon slices, potato balls, and parsley before serving.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

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

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

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

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

  5. Pork + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,668 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

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

What each ingredient does

Shad
Is the main protein, cooked gently in the oven so its flesh becomes moist and flaky.
Salt pork
Renders fat as it bakes, basting the fish and adding savory richness to the flesh.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and juices to form a moist stuffing that keeps the fish tender.
Melted butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and keeps the dressing moist during baking.
Flour
Dredged on the outside, it helps form a light crust that browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Scoring and inserting the salt pork. Strips of salt pork pushed into the cuts melt during baking and baste the fish from within. Even spacing lets the fat reach the whole fillet, so the flesh stays moist rather than drying in places.

“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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