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Shad and Shad Roe in Perfection

Broiled shad seasoned with salt, pepper and brown sugar, basted with butter and served with an egg yolk, lemon and cayenne sauce.

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 ↓

Shad and Shad Roe in Perfection

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Purchase a thick shad from a reputable fish dealer, preferably netted before rain.

  2. The night before cooking, wipe the shad with a damp cloth.

  3. Rub the shad with the salt, pepper, and brown sugar mixture.

  4. The next day, wash the shad lightly.

  5. Season the shad with additional salt and pepper.

Broil and baste

  1. Preheat the broiler and grease it with butter.

  2. Place the shad on the broiler over a hot fire.

  3. Melt some butter in a plate.

  4. Baste the shad with the melted butter while it cooks.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. In a bowl, mix the egg yolk, cayenne pepper, parsley, onion juice, and lemon juice.

  2. Serve the sauce in a small boat alongside the cooked shad.

  3. Butter the shad lightly before serving and serve immediately.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 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 + oniontop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

  5. Pepper + oniontop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Shad
The main fish, whose thick flesh holds up to broiling over a hot fire.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the fish and draws out surface moisture when rubbed in before cooking.
Brown sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the surface brown during broiling.
Butter
Adds fat and richness; basting keeps the surface moist and golden as it cooks.
Egg yolk
Emulsifies with the butter and lemon to give the sauce a smooth, thick body.

The step that matters

Basting while broiling. Sugar on the fish browns quickly over a hot fire and can scorch before the flesh is cooked through. Regular basting with melted butter adds moisture and fat, slowing the darkening and keeping the surface from drying out.

Swap the onion

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Asparagusfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, sugar, butter, egg, parsley, lemon. 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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