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Roe of Shad

A dish of boiled shad roe mixed with butter, egg yolks, bread, parsley, pepper, salt, and lemon juice.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and parsley 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 ↓

Roe of Shad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Boil the shad roe in salted water for 10 minutes.

  2. In a chafing dish, melt the butter.

  3. Remove the roe from the water and break it up lightly with a fork.

Combine and serve

  1. Add the mashed egg yolks, grated bread, chopped parsley, pepper, and salt to the roe, stirring until mixed.

  2. Add the lemon juice just before serving.

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. Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

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

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

  3. Lemon + peppertop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together27,047 recipes

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

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

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

  5. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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

What each ingredient does

Shad roe
Forms the main body of the dish, providing a rich, delicate texture once flaked.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the warm chafing dish.
Hard-boiled egg yolks
Mashed into the roe, they add a soft, creamy texture that binds the mixture.
Grated bread
Absorbs moisture and helps hold the roe together with a light, tender crumb.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich roe and butter.

The step that matters

Add the lemon juice just before serving. Acid added early can toughen and dull delicate fish proteins over heat and blunts its fresh flavour. Adding it last keeps the roe tender and the lemon taste bright.

“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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