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Baked Shad

A whole shad stuffed with bread crumbs, herbs, and butter, baked and served with a lemon‑wine sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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 stuffing

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

Bake and make the dressing

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

  2. Bake for 1 to 1¼ hours, basting occasionally.

  3. For the dressing, boil the gravy from the baking dish.

  4. Stir in catsup, brown flour mixed with cold water, lemon juice, and wine.

  5. Serve the dressing in a sauce boat alongside the shad.

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

Egg yolk
Binds the stuffing so it holds together around the fish.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body and texture.
Brown flour
Thickens the pan gravy into a smooth, glossy dressing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and basting helps keep the fish moist.
Sherry or madeira wine
Adds acidity and depth of flavour to the dressing.

The step that matters

Boil the gravy before adding the flour mixture. Flour thickens properly only when heated; adding the cold flour-water slurry to boiling gravy and stirring keeps it smooth instead of lumpy, and the wine and lemon are added after thickening so their flavours stay bright.

“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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