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Shad, Baked

A baked shad stuffed with a bread and onion mixture, served with a hard‑boiled egg sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Shad, Baked

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the stuffing

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

  2. Remove the head of the shad if desired and cut out the backbone, leaving two inches from the tail.

  3. Fry the chopped onion in butter until soft.

  4. Mix the fried onion with the soaked bread, 2 ounces of butter, salt, pepper, and parsley or sage. Heat the mixture thoroughly, then remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the shad with the mixture and secure it with string.

  2. Place the fish in a baking pan, baste it with the batter, and add water to the bottom of the pan.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Mash the hard-boiled eggs into a smooth paste, then mix in olive oil, mustard, pepper, and vinegar to taste.

  2. Serve the baked shad with the sauce.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

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

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

  4. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Shad
Forms the main body of the dish, cooked whole so the stuffing stays moist within it.
Stale bread
Soaked and squeezed, it binds the stuffing and adds soft, moist body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the stuffing and onion.
Eggs
Beaten yolks set when heated, binding the stuffing; hard-boiled whites and yolks form the smooth sauce.
Onion
Softened in butter, it adds sweetness and savoury depth to the stuffing.
Olive oil
Adds fat and smoothness to the egg sauce.

The step that matters

Heat the stuffing before adding the egg yolks. Beaten yolks scramble and thicken when hot, so they are stirred in off the heat. Heating the mixture first cooks the bread and onion through and lets the yolks bind it smoothly without curdling.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, parsley, egg, sauce, 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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