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Baked Shad

Baked Shad is a fish dish prepared by stuffing, seasoning, and baking a cleaned shad with bread crumbs, parsley, salt pork, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the fish

  1. Scrape the shad to remove scales and make a short opening down the belly to remove the insides.

  2. Wash the fish well, inside and out, and dry it with a clean towel.

  3. Rub the fish with coarse sea salt.

Stuff and score

  1. In a bowl, mix stale bread crumbs, chopped parsley, coarse sea salt, and black pepper to make the stuffing.

  2. Stuff the fish with the mixture and sew it up with soft yarn.

  3. Score one side of the fish with a sharp knife, making scores about one inch apart, and insert strips of salt pork into each gash.

  4. Place the fish in a baking pan, dredge it thickly with salt, black pepper, and flour.

Bake and serve

  1. Cover the bottom of the pan with water and place it in a hot oven at 400°F (200°C).

  2. Bake for fifteen minutes for every pound of fish, basting every ten minutes with the pan gravy.

  3. As the water evaporates, add more to keep the bottom of the pan covered.

  4. Carefully loosen the fish and slide it onto a serving dish.

  5. Garnish with slices of lemon, fried 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 + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Bread + porktop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,371 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

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 that provides the body and flesh of the dish.
Stale bread crumbs
Absorb juices in the stuffing, giving it a moist, tender texture.
Salt pork
Melts into the fish during baking, adding fat and moisture to the flesh.
Flour
Dredged on the surface, it helps form a light crust that browns during baking.

The step that matters

Keeping the pan covered with water. As water evaporates, the pan bottom can dry out and scorch. Adding water keeps steam present so the fish cooks gently and the pan gravy stays usable for basting.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, parsley, pepper, pork, flour, fried potato):

  1. Lemonthe original
  2. Avocadofits about as well
  3. Limefits about as well
  4. Cherryfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, parsley, pepper, pork, flour, fried potato. 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.

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