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Baked Shad

Baked shad stuffed with roe, mushrooms, breadcrumbs, butter, parsley, thyme, bay leaf, and baked with stock, lemon, sherry, onion.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

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

  1. Prepare the fish by splitting it open.

  2. Make a forcemeat by mixing the roe, mushrooms, breadcrumbs, butter, parsley, thyme, and bay leaf.

Stuff and bake

  1. Stuff the fish with the forcemeat and sew it up.

  2. Butter an earthenware dish and place the fish inside.

  3. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes.

  4. Baste with a mixture of white stock, lemon juice, sherry, and onion.

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 + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

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

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

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

  4. Mushroom + thymetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,557 recipes

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

  5. Mushroom + sherrytop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,176 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methoxy-4-methylphenol (smoky, clove).

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

What each ingredient does

Fish roe
Enriches the forcemeat with richness and a savoury, tender body when baked.
Breadcrumbs
Absorb moisture and butter in the forcemeat, giving it a soft, binding texture.
Butter
Adds fat that carries flavour and helps the stuffing and fish brown gently.
Mushrooms
Contribute moisture and earthy savour to the forcemeat as they cook.
White stock
Keeps the fish moist during basting and forms a flavourful liquid base.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the basting liquid and balances the rich fish.

The step that matters

Bake at 350°F (175°C) for 30 minutes. Fish cooks quickly and dries out easily. Baking at a moderate heat with regular basting keeps the flesh moist while the stuffing heats through.

“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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