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Baked Shad

A whole shad stuffed with breadcrumbs, herbs, and butter, baked and served with a sauce of catsup, flour, lemon, and sherry.

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 the fish

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix bread crumbs, salt, pepper, butter, parsley, and egg yolk.

  3. Stuff the shad with the mixture and sew it up or tie it with string.

Bake and make the sauce

  1. Place the stuffed shad in a baking dish, pour water and some butter over it.

  2. Bake for 1 to 1.25 hours, similar to baking a fowl.

  3. Boil the gravy from the baking dish.

  4. Stir in catsup, brown flour mixed with cold water, lemon juice, and sherry.

  5. Serve the sauce in a sauce-boat.

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. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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
The main fish, whose flesh bakes moist and firm inside the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and juices, forming a moist, soft stuffing inside the fish.
Egg yolk
Binds the stuffing so it holds together during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, helping the stuffing and fish brown and stay moist.
Brown flour
Thickens the gravy so the sauce becomes smooth and lightly body-rich.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Thickening the gravy with brown flour. Flour mixed with cold water first, then stirred in, prevents lumps. Flour needs to be dispersed and simmered to cook out its raw taste and reach full thickness.

“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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