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Broiled Shad

Broiled shad is a whole fish cooked over a hot grill with butter, salt, and pepper.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 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 ↓

Broiled Shad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Preheat the grill over a hot fire.

  2. Place the split fish on the grill, inside facing the fire.

Broil

  1. Broil gently, turning often in the butter.

  2. Once cooked on both sides, transfer to a dish.

Serve

  1. Cover and keep warm until ready to serve.

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
Forms the main dish; its flesh firms and flakes as it cooks over the fire.
Sweet butter
Adds moisture and richness, and helps the fish brown as it broils.

The step that matters

Broil gently, turning often in the butter. Frequent turning keeps the butter coating the fish so the surface stays moist. Gentle heat lets the flesh cook through before the butter's milk solids scorch and the outside dries out.

“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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