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Baked Shad

Baked shad stuffed with breadcrumb mixture, baked, served with tomato ketchup sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,979 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. 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 fish

  1. Empty the fish through the gills, leaving the head on, and wash it thoroughly.

  2. Mix bread crumbs with pepper, salt, onion, parsley, marjoram, and melted butter, then mix in the beaten egg.

  3. Fill the fish with this mixture.

  4. Place the fish in a long dripping pan.

  5. Season the fish with pepper and salt.

  6. Dust the fish lightly with flour.

Bake and baste

  1. Bake the fish in a preheated oven at 400°F (200°C) for about 1 hour.

  2. Baste the fish with a mixture of butter and hot water when it begins to brown.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. Combine ketchup, wine, lemon juice, and boiling water in a saucepan.

  2. Thicken the sauce with flour mixed in a little cold water.

  3. Bring the sauce to a boil.

  4. Add any drippings from the fish to the sauce.

  5. Pour the sauce over the fish.

  6. Garnish the fish with parsley.

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 + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Marjoram + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

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

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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 whole so the stuffing stays moist inside.
Egg
Binds the breadcrumb stuffing so it holds together during baking.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and give the stuffing body, keeping the fish's interior soft.
Butter
Adds fat for richness and helps the surface brown during baking and basting.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the fish instead of running off.
Tomato or mushroom ketchup
Provides savory, tangy flavour as the base of the sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the sauce with flour. Flour must be mixed into cold water first so it disperses without lumps. Added directly to hot liquid, it clumps, and the sauce stays thin or grainy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, parsley, marjoram, egg, butter, pepper, flour):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Leekfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, parsley, marjoram, egg, butter, pepper, flour. 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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