Skip to main content
Main

Philadelphia Planked Shad

A whole shad is seasoned, cooked on a heated plank, and served with a sauce of liver, roe, lemon, butter, flour, cloves, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Philadelphia Planked Shad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the plank and fish

  1. Prepare an oaken plank, 2 inches thick, 18 inches wide, and 30 inches long. Smooth both sides.

  2. Nail the shad to the board or use wires to secure it.

  3. Place the board in front of a fire to heat it without burning.

  4. Scale the shad, trim fins and tail, and remove the back bone and entrails, saving the liver and roe.

  5. Rub the shad with cold butter and season with salt and pepper.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, combine the liver, roe, lemon slices, butter, flour, cloves, and enough hot water to cover.

  2. Season with salt and pepper, and stew gently.

  3. When the shad is done, add wine to the sauce.

  4. Break up the liver and roe with a fork.

Cook and serve

  1. Lay the shad on the hot plank, skin side down.

  2. Place it in front of the fire to brown.

  3. Serve the sauce with 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. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Lemon + clovetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Lemon + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,157 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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, cooked whole so its flesh stays moist on the plank.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the fish and helps the sauce turn smooth.
Flour
Thickens the sauce so it clings to the fish and the roe.
Roe (in the method)
Enriches the sauce with a rich, savory flavor and a soft, creamy texture.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and roe sauce.

The step that matters

Place the shad in front of the fire to brown. Heat must be strong enough to brown the skin but gentle enough not to burn the plank or dry the fish. Too much heat scorches the wood and the fish, while too little leaves the surface pale and flabby.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, pepper, lemon, flour, wine):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, pepper, lemon, flour, wine. 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.

You might also like

Lemon SauceLemon Sauce236 recipesTomato SoupTomato Soup526 recipesBrown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesMutton BrothMutton Broth292 recipes