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Planked Shad

A whole shad is cooked on a wooden plank over a fire, basted with saltwater, butter, and walnut catsup, served with pickled walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and walnut are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 6,832 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Planked Shad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the board

  1. Prepare a thick oak board with wooden pegs.

  2. Spread the fish open on the board and secure it with the pegs.

Cook the fish

  1. Place the board before a clear fire, resting one end in a shallow pan with a little salt and water.

  2. Baste the fish with the saltwater as it cooks.

  3. When almost cooked, baste with melted butter and a little walnut catsup.

Serve

  1. Serve on the board or add walnut catsup to the gravy and pour it over the fish.

  2. Serve with pickled walnuts.

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. Butter + walnuttop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,832 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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 moist, flaky flesh.
Melted butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the fish brown and taste savoury at the end.
Walnut catsup
Adds deep, tangy, savoury flavour to the basting and the finished gravy.
Coarse sea salt
Seasons the basting liquid, lightly flavouring the fish as it cooks.

The step that matters

Baste with melted butter and walnut catsup near the end. Added too early, the butter and catsup's sugars can scorch over a fire before the fish is cooked through. Adding them when nearly done gives colour and flavour without 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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