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Baked Shad Au Court Bouillon

A baked shad served with a sauce made from veal stock, butter, lemon juice, and egg yolks.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and pepper match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Baked Shad Au Court Bouillon

Oven, in the book's wordsA steady oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a steady oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Bake the shad

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Place the shad in a covered roaster with just enough water underneath to prevent burning.

  3. Bake for 30 minutes, then rub the fish with a mixture of butter, lemon juice, pepper, and salt.

  4. Cover again and cook for 15 minutes per pound until done.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, thicken the veal stock with a brown roux.

  2. Gradually add the thickened stock to the beaten egg yolks with a dash of lemon juice.

  3. Set the sauce dish in boiling water for 3 minutes without cooking.

  4. Pour the sauce over the fish 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. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Lemon + vealtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  4. Butter + eggtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Lemon + eggtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Lemon and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 44,316 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, cooking to flaky, moist flesh under cover.
Egg yolks
Enrich the sauce and thicken it gently as they warm, giving it a smooth, rich texture.
Veal stock
Provides the savory liquid base of the sauce, thickened with roux.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the fish as it bastes the surface during baking.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the fish and balances the rich sauce.

The step that matters

Gently warming the egg yolk sauce. Egg yolks thicken at low heat but scramble if overheated. Adding the stock gradually and warming the sauce in boiling water, without letting it cook hard, keeps it smooth and pourable.

“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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