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Baked Shad with Roe Sauce

A baked shad stuffed with breadcrumbs and herbs, topped with tomato slices, served with a roe sauce made from shad roe, butter, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 22 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and thyme match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Baked Shad with Roe Sauce

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 shad

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Stuff the shad with the bread crumbs, butter, onion, parsley, thyme, canned tomato, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper.

  3. Place the shad in a baking pan and top with slices of raw tomato sprinkled with salt and pepper.

Bake and baste

  1. Baste the shad while baking with butter and a little hot water.

  2. Before the shad is done, pour over it a mixture of sherry, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, and Tabasco sauce.

Make the roe sauce and serve

  1. For the roe, parboil it in salted water with cloves, bay leaf, and thyme.

  2. Remove the skin from the roe and place it in a chafing dish with butter, salt, and cayenne pepper.

  3. Once the butter melts, stir in tomato sauce, lemon juice, and sherry or Madeira.

  4. Cook for five minutes and serve with the baked shad.

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 + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + peppertop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Thyme + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,370 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  5. Onion + thymetop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,171 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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, carrying the stuffing and flavour while it bakes.
Roe
Gives the sauce richness and a creamy, savoury texture when cooked gently in butter.
Dried bread crumbs
Absorb juices from the fish and hold the stuffing together, keeping it moist.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and browns lightly while basting the fish and sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the baking liquid and the roe sauce.
Worcestershire sauce
Contributes savoury, tangy depth that complements the fish and tomato.

The step that matters

Parboil the roe before making the sauce. Roe is delicate and can toughen or break apart if overcooked. A brief gentle parboil firms it enough to peel and slice cleanly, then it finishes gently in butter so it stays tender.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (bread, butter, parsley, thyme, tomato, sauce, pepper):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Carrotfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, parsley, thyme, tomato, sauce, pepper. 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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