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Delicious Shad Roe

A baked shad roe dish prepared with butter, flour, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and flour are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Delicious Shad Roe

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 roe

  1. Clean the roe well.

  2. Drop the roe in boiling water and cook gently for 20 minutes.

  3. Drain the roe.

Bake

  1. Butter a baking dish and lay the drained roe in it.

  2. Dredge the roe with salt and pepper, then spread with butter and dredge with flour.

  3. Cook in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes, basting frequently with a mixture of flour, butter, and water.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Flour + peppertop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together50,459 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 roe (in the method)
Forms the dish's main body, and its delicate texture sets as it cooks through.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Flour
Dusted on the roe and mixed into the basting liquid to help form a light coating.

The step that matters

Gentle simmering of the roe. Boiling vigorously can break up the delicate roe and toughen its membrane. A gentle simmer cooks it evenly and keeps it intact before baking.

“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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