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Creamed Shad-roes

A creamy sauce of shad roe, eggs, butter, milk, and cream, served hot.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Creamed Shad-roes

Ingredients

Directions

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, melt the butter and flour together until bubbling.

  2. Add the milk and stir until the sauce is thick and smooth.

Finish and serve

  1. Incorporate the crumbled shad-roes and cook for 3 minutes, stirring constantly.

  2. Add the cream, egg whites, salt, and cayenne, and cook for 3 minutes more until bubbling.

  3. Sprinkle the grated yolks over the top and serve immediately.

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 + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

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

  2. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Roe + eggtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together243 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  5. Roe + buttertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together442 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

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
Forms the main body of the dish, giving it a rich, delicate flavor and soft, flaky texture.
Butter and flour
Together form a roux that thickens the milk into a smooth, stable sauce.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the white sauce, carrying the thickened, creamy texture.
Cream
Adds fat and richness, giving the sauce a smoother, more velvety mouthfeel.
Hard-boiled eggs
Egg whites add body and mild flavor to the sauce; grated yolks add richness on top.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce before adding the roe. The butter and flour roux must be fully bubbling and the milk stirred until thick and smooth. If the sauce is not properly thickened, it will stay thin and may become lumpy, and the roe will not sit well in it.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (roe, egg, butter, flour, milk, cream):

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Raisinfits about as well
  3. Lemonthe original
  4. Figfits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against roe, egg, butter, flour, milk, cream. 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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