Skip to main content
Main

Wilmington Baked Shad

A baked shad coated with a crumbed onion mixture and basted in water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Wilmington 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.

Make the stuffing

  1. Melt the butter in a pan over medium heat.

  2. Add the chopped onions, bread crumbs, pepper, and salt; mix well.

  3. Let the mixture cool, then stir in the beaten egg.

Assemble and bake

  1. Dredge the fish in flour and place it in a baking pan.

  2. Spread the onion and bread crumb mixture on top of the fish.

  3. Pour enough water over the fish to baste it while baking.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) until the fish is brown and cooked through.

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

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

  2. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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

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

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Binds the bread crumb and onion mixture so it holds together on the fish.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and onion juices, forming a moist, soft stuffing layer.
Onions
Add sweetness and aroma as they soften in the butter.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavor through the stuffing and helping it brown.

The step that matters

Let the mixture cool before adding the egg. Stirring a beaten egg into a hot mixture can partly cook it and make it lumpy, so it will not blend evenly and bind the stuffing as well.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, pepper, butter, parsley, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Chivefits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, pepper, butter, parsley, flour. 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.

More baked shad recipes

Dressing 3 See all 114 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes