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To Broil Fresh Shad and Other Fish

A simple broiled fresh shad seasoned with butter, pepper, and coarse sea salt.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Fish and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 4,488 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

To Broil Fresh Shad and Other Fish

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Split, wash, and dry the fish with a cloth.

  2. Place the fish, skin side up, over the coals.

  3. Broil for 15 minutes or longer.

  4. Butter the fish generously and season with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  5. Serve hot.

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. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  2. Fish + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together3,948 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Fresh fish
Forms the main body of the dish, cooking to flaky, tender flesh under direct heat.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the surface of the fish as it cooks.

The step that matters

Broiling the fish for 15 minutes or longer. Fish is delicate and cooks quickly. Overcooking dries out the flesh and makes it tough, so check doneness by watching for flakiness rather than relying only on the time given.

“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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