Skip to main content
Main

Fried Shad

A fried fish dish made from roe-shad, seasoned with salt, pepper, and flour, served with lemon, parsley, or watercresses and catsup.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Fried Shad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean, wash, and wipe the roe-shad.

  2. Split it open and cut each side into four pieces, leaving the head, fins, and tail off.

  3. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and black pepper, then dredge with flour.

Fry

  1. Heat lard or drippings in a frying pan until boiling hot.

  2. Fry the fish until brown, turning it after five minutes to cook the other side.

  3. Fry the roe in the same way.

Serve

  1. Place the fish in the center of a dish and arrange the roe around it.

  2. Garnish with lemon, parsley, or watercresses and serve with catsup.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 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. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Flour
Forms a light coating that helps the surface brown and crisp when fried.
Lard or drippings
Conducts heat for frying and gives the fish a browned, crisp surface.
Roe-shad
Serves as the main fish, with its roe cooked alongside for richness.

The step that matters

Heating the lard or drippings until boiling hot. Fat that is not hot enough lets the flour coating soak up oil and turn greasy instead of browning quickly. Starting at high heat seals the coating so the fish fries crisp rather than soft.

“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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes