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Baked Shad

Baked Shad is a whole fish baked with breadcrumb stuffing, served with a lemon‑ketchup gravy.

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 fish

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

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

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

Bake

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

  2. Bake for 1 to 1.25 hours.

Make the dressing and serve

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

  2. Stir in ketchup, brown flour mixed with cold water, lemon juice, and sherry or Madeira wine.

  3. Serve the dressing in a sauce boat alongside 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 + 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 and stuffed so it stays moist during baking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and egg yolk in the stuffing, giving it body and a soft texture.
Egg yolk
Binds the stuffing so it holds together inside the fish.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and moisture, and helps the surface brown.
Brown flour
Thickens the pan gravy into a smooth dressing.
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 needs heat to thicken a liquid smoothly. Adding it to cold or unboiled gravy can leave lumps, so the dressing should be brought to a boil first and the flour slurry stirred in while it is hot.

“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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