Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓
Baked Shad
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Prepare the fish
Wash the shad in cold water and dry it.
Fill the shad with stuffing, leaving room for it to swell, then sew it up with a small cord.
Sprinkle salt and pepper on the fish and dredge it with flour.
Bake and serve
Heat a fish pan with butter and lard until hot enough to brown.
Lay the fish in the pan and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 45 minutes, basting often.
When done, add hot water, anchovy sauce, and tomato ketchup to the pan, boil for a minute, and stir.
Pour the gravy into a dish and carefully cut and remove the cord from the fish.
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.
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Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together1,099 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
-
Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together2,057 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
-
Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairsSmell alikestrongCooked together479 recipes
Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
-
Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together17,923 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).
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Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together124,287 recipes
Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Flour and butter 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
- Flour
- Forms a light coating on the fish that helps it brown and holds juices in.
- Butter
- Adds richness and flavour and helps the fish brown in the hot pan.
- Lard
- Adds fat that conducts heat well, helping the skin brown and crisp.
- Tomato ketchup
- Adds sweetness and acidity to the pan gravy, deepening its colour and flavour.
- Anchovy sauce
- Adds savoury, salty depth to the pan gravy.
The step that matters
Heating the fat before the fish goes in. The pan must be hot enough to brown before the fish is added. If it is cool, the flour coating absorbs fat and steams instead of browning, and the fish can stick and fall apart.
Swap the tomato
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, butter, anchovy, sauce, ketchup):
- Shallotfits better
- Capsicumfits better
- Horseradishfits better
- Tomatothe original
Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter, anchovy, sauce, ketchup. 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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