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To Broil Shad

A whole shad is seasoned, stuffed, wrapped in buttered paper, and broiled over charcoal, served with caper sauce or vinegar and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

To Broil Shad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean, wash, and split the shad.

  2. Wipe it dry and sprinkle with pepper and coarse sea salt.

  3. Fill the fish with forcemeat or its own roe, then sew it up or secure with fine skewers.

Broil and serve

  1. Wrap in thickly buttered paper and broil gently over a charcoal fire for 1 hour.

  2. Serve with caper sauce or cayenne vinegar and melted butter.

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 + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Pepper + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 recipes

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

  3. Pepper + saucetop 27% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,303 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 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 in its split form, so its flesh becomes flaky and moist.
Butter
Coats the paper wrapping, adding moisture and richness as the fish gently steams and browns.

The step that matters

Wrap in thickly buttered paper and broil gently. Gentle heat over charcoal cooks the fish slowly, so the thick butter-coated paper keeps it moist while the flesh cooks through without drying 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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