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Baked Shad

Baked shad stuffed with pepper, salt, cloves, marjoram, and egg yolk, baked with butter and flour, served with lemon garnish.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Marjoram and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 957 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 stuffing

  1. Make a stuffing with the head, seasoned with pepper, salt, cloves, and marjoram; moisten with the beaten egg yolk.

  2. Stuff the fish with the mixture.

  3. Rub the outside with the egg yolk and some stuffing.

Bake and serve

  1. Place the fish in a deep pan, with its tail to its mouth.

  2. Add a little water and the butter rolled in flour to the pan.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for two hours.

  4. Pour the gravy around the fish.

  5. Garnish with sliced lemon.

  6. 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. Marjoram + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together957 recipes

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

  2. Clove + marjoramtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  3. Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

  4. Pepper + marjoramtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,609 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  5. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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, cooked whole and stuffed.
Beaten egg yolk
Binds the stuffing and helps coat the outside of the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and fat to the pan gravy, with flour helping it thicken.
Dried sweet marjoram
Adds a warm, herbal aroma to the stuffing.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, marjoram, egg, butter, flour, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Thymefits better
  3. Tarragonfits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, marjoram, egg, butter, flour, lemon. 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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