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Baked Shad

A baked whole shad stuffed with bread crumbs, parsley, salt pork, and butter, garnished with lemon, olives, potato balls, and parsley.

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 warm oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a warm oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Season the cleaned shad with salt and pepper.

  3. In a bowl, mix the bread crumbs, chopped parsley, salt, pepper, and melted butter to make the stuffing.

  4. Stuff the fish with the mixture and sew it shut.

  5. Score one side of the fish about two inches apart and insert slices of salt pork into each gash.

  6. Place additional slices of salt pork on the bottom of the baking dish and lay the fish on top.

  7. Sprinkle the fish generously with salt, pepper, and flour.

Bake and serve

  1. Bake for 15 minutes per pound of fish.

  2. Garnish with lemon slices, olives, 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. 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 + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  5. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

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, cooked whole so the stuffing and salt pork flavour it from inside and around.
Bread crumbs
Soak up the melted butter and juices to form a moist stuffing that stays tender inside the fish.
Salt pork
Renders fat as it cooks, basting the fish and adding savoury richness to the flesh.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing, helping keep the fish moist while it bakes.
Flour
Dusted on the surface, it helps the outside of the fish brown and form a light crust.

The step that matters

Bake for 15 minutes per pound of fish. Fish cooks quickly and turns dry or flaky-tough once overcooked. Weighing the fish and timing by weight helps the flesh stay moist, and the stuffing needs enough heat to become fully hot inside.

Swap the lemon

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, pepper, parsley, butter, pork, flour, olive. 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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