Why it works: Butter and pepper 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 ↓
Broiled Shad
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Clean and wash the shad, then split it down the back and remove the backbone.
Place the fish on a buttered wire grill with the inside facing the heat.
Melt the butter and season it with pepper and salt in a cup.
Broil
Brush the fish with the butter every five minutes while broiling.
Broil the inside for about 20 minutes, then turn it over to brown the skin without burning.
Serve
Once cooked, place the fish skin side down on a hot dish.
Pour any remaining melted butter over the fish, season with pepper and salt, and serve hot.
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.
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Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked 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, cooked through by broiling as the flesh firms.
- Butter
- Adds moisture and richness, and helps the skin brown while the fish broils.
The step that matters
Turning the fish to brown the skin. Turning the fish after the inside has cooked lets the skin brown without burning. Broiling skin-side up too long scorches it before the flesh is done.
“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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