Name: Baked Shad
Ingredients: 1 shad; 1 minced onion; parsley; a little salt pork; coarse sea salt to taste

Why it works: Onion and parsley are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 25,843 recipes. Both carry 2,4-decadienal, which smells seaweed. The science ↓

Baked Shad

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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Clean and prepare the shad.

Assemble and bake

Place the shad in a baking dish.
Add the minced onion and cover with parsley.
Add small pieces of salt pork on top.
Season with coarse sea salt.
Bake in the preheated oven until cooked through.

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.

Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together25,843 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Onion + porktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together18,214 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
Parsley + porktop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together7,804 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: Is the main protein, cooked through by gentle oven heat.
Salt pork: Renders fat as it bakes, adding moisture and savoury richness to the fish.
Minced onion: Releases moisture and aromatic flavour into the dish as it cooks.