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Baked Shad

Baked shad is a whole fish stuffed with breadcrumbs, seasonings, and butter, then baked and served with a tomato‑based sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and watercress match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 579 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. 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 fish

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

  2. Remove the gills from the shad and stuff it with a mixture of bread crumbs, salt, pepper, butter, and the beaten egg yolk.

  3. Sew up the fish or tie it with string.

Bake

  1. Pour a little water and some butter over the fish.

  2. Bake for 1 to 1¼ hours, as you would a fowl.

Make the dressing and serve

  1. For the dressing, boil the gravy from the baking pan.

  2. Add catsup, brown flour mixed with cold water, lemon juice, and sherry or Madeira wine.

  3. Serve the dressing in a sauce boat.

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 + watercresstop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together579 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

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

  4. Watercress + flourtop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together340 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Pepper + watercresstop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together983 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
The main fish, which is stuffed, baked whole and carved for serving.
Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and egg in the stuffing, giving it a soft, moist body.
Egg yolk
Binds the bread crumb stuffing together so it holds its shape while baking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing and the basting liquid, aiding browning.
Brown flour
Thickens the pan gravy into a smooth dressing.
Sherry or madeira wine
Adds acidity and aromatic depth to the finished dressing.

The step that matters

Bake for 1 to 1¼ hours, as you would a fowl. Fish cooks much faster than poultry and dries out quickly, so the timing must be checked closely. The flesh is done when it flakes easily at the thickest part, and overbaking makes it dry.

“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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