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Planked Shad

A whole shad cooked on a heated oak or hickory plank with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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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 ↓

Planked 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

  1. Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Wash and dry the shad.

  3. Rub the shad on both sides with butter and sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Cook on the plank

  1. Place the shad, open side up, on the hot plank and secure it with tacks at each corner.

  2. Put the plank on the upper rack of the oven and baste the fish with butter every few minutes until cooked.

  3. Check for doneness by testing with a fork.

Serve

  1. Carefully remove the tacks and transfer the fish to a hot platter.

  2. Serve with melted butter, garnished with lemon slices and 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. Butter + peppertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked 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
The main fish; its flesh cooks through and flakes when done.
Butter
Adds moisture and richness, and basting keeps the fish from drying out.

The step that matters

Checking doneness with a fork. Fish cooks quickly and turns dry past the point of doneness. Testing with a fork, where the flesh flakes easily and turns opaque, helps prevent overcooking.

“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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