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Baked Shad

A baked shad coated in bread crumbs, butter, parsley, and a tomato‑based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Baked Shad

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the fish

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

  2. Mix bread crumbs, salt, pepper, butter, parsley, and beaten egg yolk.

  3. Stuff the shad with the mixture and sew it up or tie it with string.

Bake

  1. Pour water and some butter over the fish.

  2. Bake for 1 to 1¼ hours.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. Boil the gravy from the baking dish to make the dressing.

  2. Add catsup, brown flour mixed with cold water, lemon juice, and sherry or Madeira wine.

  3. Serve the dressing in a sauce boat.

  4. Garnish the fish with lemon slices and watercress.

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. Parsley + lemontop 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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour 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

Shad
Is the main fish that is stuffed, baked and served as the centerpiece.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and egg yolk in the stuffing, giving it a soft, moist body.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing and moistens the fish as it bakes.
Beaten egg yolk
Binds the stuffing so it holds together around the fish.
Brown flour
Thickens the pan gravy into a smooth dressing.
Sherry or madeira wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the dressing.

The step that matters

Thickening the brown flour into the gravy. Brown flour added to hot liquid can clump if it is not mixed smoothly first. Stirring it into cold water before adding it lets the starch disperse evenly, so the dressing thickens into a smooth sauce.

“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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