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Baked Shad

Baked Shad is a whole fish stuffed, seasoned, dredged, baked, and served with a sauce of anchovy, ketchup, and water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Sauce and ketchup match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,099 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Baked Shad

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the shad

  1. Wash the shad in cold water and dry it off.

  2. Fill the shad with stuffing, leaving room for it to swell, then sew it up with a small cord.

  3. Sprinkle salt and pepper on the shad and dredge it with flour.

Bake and make the gravy

  1. In a fish pan, heat the butter and lard until hot enough to brown.

  2. Lay the fish in the pan and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 45 minutes, basting often.

  3. Add hot water, anchovy sauce, and tomato ketchup to the pan.

  4. Boil the mixture for 1 minute, stirring from the bottom.

  5. Pour the gravy into a dish.

  6. Carefully cut and remove the cord from the fish.

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. Sauce + ketchuptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,099 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Anchovy + saucetop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  3. Anchovy + ketchuptop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together479 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  4. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter 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
The main fish, whose flesh cooks through and becomes flaky in the oven.
Flour
Dry coating that helps the fish brown and gives the pan juices some body.
Butter
Fat that browns the fish surface and adds richness and aroma to the pan.
Lard
Fat with a high smoke point that helps the fish brown in the hot pan.
Tomato ketchup
Adds sweetness and acidity to the gravy, balancing the rich fat.
Anchovy sauce
Adds savory depth to the gravy through its salty, umami flavor.

The step that matters

Heating the butter and lard until hot enough to brown. The fat must be hot before the fish goes in, so the surface sears and browns rather than steaming. Starting in cool fat leaves the skin pale and can make it stick.

Swap the tomato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, flour, butter, anchovy, sauce, ketchup):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits better
  3. Horseradishfits better
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, flour, butter, anchovy, sauce, ketchup. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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