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Fillet of Shad, with Puree of Sorrel

Fillet of shad served with a sauce made from sorrel puree, cream, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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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 ↓

Fillet of Shad, with Puree of Sorrel

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Sprinkle the shad pieces with salt, lemon juice, and parsley.

  2. In a saucepan, cook the shad on low heat for 15 minutes with white wine and 1 tablespoon of butter.

Make the sorrel sauce

  1. Blanch the sorrel in boiling water, then drain and press through a sieve.

  2. In another saucepan, melt 1 tablespoon of butter, add flour, salt, pepper, and nutmeg, and cook until slightly colored.

  3. Stir in the sorrel puree and cream, and simmer gently for 10 minutes.

  4. Mix the egg yolks with a little milk, then add to the sauce and boil for 5 more minutes.

Serve

  1. Pour the sauce over the fish and serve.

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. Parsley + sorreltop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together234 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  4. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  5. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Shad
Is the main protein, cooked gently in wine and butter so it stays moist.
Sorrel
Its puree gives the sauce its tart, green flavour and body.
Butter
Adds richness and carries flavour in both the fish and the sauce base.
Flour
Cooked with butter to form a roux that thickens the sauce.
Cream
Adds richness and smoothness, softening the sorrel's sharpness.
Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce further and add richness when gently heated.

The step that matters

Adding the egg yolks. Egg yolks thicken by coagulating with heat, so if the sauce is at a hard boil when they go in, they can scramble and turn grainy. Keep the heat gentle and the sauce smooth.

Swap the nutmeg

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, parsley, white wine, butter, sorrel, flour, pepper):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Marjoramfits better
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, parsley, white wine, butter, sorrel, flour, pepper. 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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