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Baked Shad

Baked Shad is a whole fish stuffed with breadcrumbs, butter, parsley, and egg, then baked and garnished with parsley and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

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

Stuff and close the fish

  1. Stuff the shad with a mixture of bread crumbs, salt, pepper, butter, parsley, and the beaten egg.

  2. Sew the fish closed or tie it with string.

Bake and serve

  1. Pour a little boiling water and some butter over the fish, or lay strips of bacon on top.

  2. Bake the shad as you would a chicken until cooked through.

  3. Garnish with parsley and lemon before serving.

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. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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 the flesh firms and turns opaque as it bakes.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture from the fish and butter, keeping the stuffing soft rather than soggy.
Egg
Binds the stuffing together so it holds its shape inside the fish.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and keeps the fish moist while it bakes.
Bacon
Optional strips laid on top that release fat and add savoury flavour as they cook.

The step that matters

Bake until cooked through. Shad is a bony, delicate fish, and overbaking dries out its flesh. Check that it flakes easily at the thickest point rather than relying only on the stated time.

“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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