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Broiled Shad

Broiled shad seasoned with salt, sugar, cayenne pepper, and coarse sea salt, served with lemon slices and fried roe.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Broiled Shad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Scale, wash, and score the shad.

  2. Mix salt and sugar together, then rub it over the fish and let it sit for 2 hours.

  3. Wash the fish again, dry it with a towel, and season with cayenne pepper and coarse sea salt.

Broil and serve

  1. Heat the grill and butter the bars.

  2. Broil the fish gradually, browning one side before turning it.

  3. Once done, place the fish on a dish, baste with butter, and serve hot.

  4. Garnish the dish with lemon slices.

Prepare the roe

  1. For the roe, wash it carefully, parboil in salt water, season with salt and cayenne pepper, dredge with flour, and fry in fresh lard until golden brown.

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 + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  4. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 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

Shad (in the method)
The main fish, whose flesh is cooked through by broiling while the skin browns.
Salt and sugar cure
Salt and sugar rubbed on the fish season it and draw out some moisture during the two-hour rest.
Butter
Greases the grill bars and, basted over the fish, adds richness and a glossy finish.
Roe (in the method)
Cooked separately, its dredging in flour gives a crisp, golden coating when fried.

The step that matters

Broiling the fish gradually. Broiling too fast over high heat can scorch the skin before the thick flesh cooks through. Browning one side at a time, at a steady pace, lets the heat reach the centre evenly.

“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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