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Broiled Shad

A whole shad is cleaned, rubbed with oil or butter, broiled, then served with a lemon‑parsley butter sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and wash the shad quickly over a pan of cold water.

  2. Split the shad down the back and wipe it dry.

  3. Rub the fish inside and out with oil or butter to prevent sticking.

Broil and season

  1. Broil the shad on a double wire broiler over clear coals, turning every minute until both sides are browned.

  2. Carefully open the broiler and transfer the fish to a hot dish.

  3. Rub the fish with a mixture of butter, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

  4. Garnish with parsley, cresses, or sliced lemon.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, whip butter with lemon juice and mix in finely minced parsley until green.

  2. Serve the sauce in a lemon shell with each portion of fish.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

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

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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
Is the main fish, cooked whole after splitting so it cooks evenly through.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture, and browns on the surface during broiling.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich fish and butter sauce.

The step that matters

Turning the fish on the broiler. Turning every minute keeps the thin split fish from scorching on one side while the other stays raw, so both sides brown evenly and the flesh 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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