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Broiled Shad with Maitre D' Hotel Butter

Broiled shad served with a butter, parsley, lemon, and pepper sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Broiled Shad with Maitre D' Hotel Butter

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Clean and split the shad down the back.

  2. Marinate the shad for at least 1 hour in a mixture of salad oil or melted butter, vinegar, coarse sea salt, and black pepper.

Broil

  1. Rub a griddle with a little butter to prevent sticking and place the shad on it.

  2. Broil the shad slowly, starting with the inside.

  3. Once cooked, place the shad on a hot dish and spread with maitre d' hotel butter.

Make the maitre d' hotel butter

  1. To make the maitre d' hotel butter, mix cold butter, chopped parsley, lemon juice, and black pepper together and spread over the broiled shad.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Vinegar + peppertop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,814 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

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, cooking into tender, flaky fish when broiled slowly.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, keeps the fish moist, and helps prevent sticking on the griddle.
Vinegar
Adds acidity to the marinade, brightening the flavor of the fish.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity to the maitre d' hotel butter, lifting the rich butter with fresh sharpness.
Parsley
Adds fresh, herbal aroma to the maitre d' hotel butter.

The step that matters

Broil the shad slowly, starting with the inside.. Slow heat lets the thick flesh cook through evenly before the skin scorches. Starting inside-up gives the thickest part the most direct cooking and keeps the outside from drying out or burning.

“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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