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Planked Shad

A whole shad is seasoned and cooked on a heated plank in an oven.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Planked Shad

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

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

Prepare the plank

  1. Preheat the plank by heating it very hot, turning it several times.

Bake and serve

  1. Skewer the cleaned shad, seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter, to the board, skin side down.

  2. Place the plank in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 30 minutes.

  3. Baste the fish with butter three times, every 10 minutes.

  4. Serve the fish on the plank, garnished with a napkin or a wreath of parsley or cresses.

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. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

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 gently to flake as its flesh sets.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, keeping the fish from drying as it bakes.

The step that matters

Baste the fish with butter three times, every 10 minutes.. Fish dries out quickly in dry oven heat. Regular basting adds fat to the surface, keeping the flesh moist and helping it stay tender through the 30 minutes of baking.

“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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