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Baked Shad

A whole shad stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, parsley, and egg yolk, baked and garnished with lemon slices and watercress.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix bread crumbs, salt, pepper, butter, parsley, and egg yolk.

  3. Stuff the mixture into the shad and sew it up or tie it with string.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the shad in a baking dish, pour a little water and some butter over it.

  2. Bake for 1 to 1¼ hours, until cooked through.

  3. Garnish with lemon slices and watercress 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 + watercresstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + watercresstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Shad
Is the main fish, cooked whole so its flesh becomes flaky and moist as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and butter from the stuffing, keeping the filling soft rather than dense.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavor and keeps the fish and stuffing moist while baking.
Egg yolk
Binds the stuffing so it holds together inside the fish.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. Whole fish can look done on the outside while the thickest part and the stuffing remain underdone. Baking until the flesh is opaque and flakes easily at the centre ensures it is fully cooked, and the stuffing is hot throughout.

“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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