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Fried Shad Au Gratin

Fried shad au gratin is a dish of fried shad pieces and roes coated in beaten eggs and cracker crumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and roe work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 243 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Fried Shad Au Gratin

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the shad

  1. Clean, wash, and wipe the shad.

  2. Remove the head, tail, and fins, then cut the fish into eight pieces.

  3. Season the pieces with salt and pepper.

Coat and fry

  1. Dip each piece into the beaten eggs, then coat with cracker crumbs.

  2. Fry the coated pieces in hot dripping or lard until golden brown.

  3. Drain on paper towels and serve on a hot, flat dish.

Prepare and fry the roes

  1. Parboil the roes, cool them, then dip in egg and cracker crumbs.

  2. Fry the roes in the same manner as the fish and serve together.

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. Egg + roetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together243 recipes

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

  2. Pepper + roetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together360 recipes

    Shared aroma: nonanal (fat, citrus).

  3. Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together50,580 recipes

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

Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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
Forms the main body of the dish, with flaky flesh that cooks through during frying.
Beaten eggs
Act as a binder so the cracker crumbs adhere to the fish before frying.
Cracker crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns during frying.
Hot dripping or lard
Conducts heat to crisp the coating and adds richness to the browned crust.

The step that matters

Frying the coated pieces. The fat must be hot enough to brown the crumb coating quickly. If it is too cool, the crumbs absorb fat and turn greasy before the fish cooks through.

“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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