Skip to main content
Main

Baked Shad

A baked shad stuffed with bread, onion, butter, herbs, and egg yolks, served with a mustard‑olive oil sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. 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. The book gives no cooking times either; the times in the steps were added in transcription, so check for doneness rather than trusting the clock.

Prepare the stuffing

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

  2. Cut off the head of the shad if preferred and remove the backbone, leaving 2 inches near the tail.

  3. In a skillet, melt 1 tablespoon of butter and fry the chopped onion until soft.

  4. In a bowl, combine the fried onion, soaked bread, 1 tablespoon of butter, salt, pepper, and parsley or sage.

  5. Heat the mixture thoroughly.

  6. Remove from heat and stir in the beaten egg yolks.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the mixture into the shad and secure it with kitchen twine.

  2. Place the fish in a baking pan, baste with remaining butter, and add water to the bottom of the pan.

  3. Bake for about 30-40 minutes or until cooked through.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, mash the hard‑boiled egg yolks into a smooth paste, then mix in olive oil, mustard, pepper, and vinegar to taste.

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. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  2. Parsley + olivetop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,649 recipes

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

  3. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

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

  4. Onion + olivetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together29,779 recipes

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

  5. Onion + parsleytop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together25,843 recipes

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

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 that is stuffed, baked and carries the whole dish.
Stale bread
Soaked and squeezed, it absorbs moisture and gives the stuffing body without making it wet.
Egg yolks
Beaten into the stuffing, they bind it and set as it bakes, holding it together.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, and basting the fish helps keep its surface moist while baking.
Onion
Softened in butter first, it adds sweetness and savory depth to the stuffing.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed into a paste, they give the sauce a smooth, rich body.

The step that matters

Stuff and bake without overfilling. Packing the stuffing too tightly can leave the centre undercooked and split the skin, while the egg yolks need gentle heat to set. Bake until the fish is cooked through, checking it at the lower end of the time range.

Swap the onion

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, butter, pepper, parsley, egg, sauce, olive. 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.

More baked shad recipes

Dressing 3 See all 114 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes