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Baked Shad

Baked shad with walnut butter topping and potato slices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 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).

  2. Prepare a stuffing with soaked bread-crumbs, butter, pepper, and salt.

  3. Place the stuffing lengthwise in a pan.

Bake and serve

  1. Roll walnuts of butter in flour and place 4 to 6 on top of the fish.

  2. Fill the space around the fish with slices of raw potato.

  3. Bake for 40 minutes.

  4. Serve the baked shad with the potatoes.

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. Parsley + potatotop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,855 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Butter + breadtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  4. Parsley + walnuttop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together865 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  5. Lemon + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,149 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Shad
Forms the main body of the dish and carries the flavor of the baked fish.
Sweet butter
Adds richness and moisture, keeping the fish and stuffing from drying out in the oven.
Soaked bread-crumbs
Form the stuffing, absorbing juices and giving the filling a soft, moist texture.
Raw potatoes
Bake alongside the fish, absorbing juices and becoming tender and mildly starchy.

The step that matters

Place the stuffing lengthwise in a pan. The stuffing must sit under the fish so it stays moist and holds its shape while baking. Its position controls how evenly the fish cooks.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, parsley, lemon, bread, flour, walnut, potato):

  1. Thymefits better
  2. Marjoramfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, parsley, lemon, bread, flour, walnut, potato. 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.

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