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Baked Shad

Baked fine roe‑shad stuffed with breadcrumb‑pork forcemeat, served with lemon‑parsley gravy.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Baked Shad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Wash and wipe the shad inside and out.

  2. Prepare a forcemeat with breadcrumbs, fat salt pork, butter, minced parsley, salt, and pepper.

  3. Stuff the forcemeat into the fish. Sew the fish closed.

  4. Place the shad in a baking pan.

Bake and baste

  1. Pour boiling water over the fish. Cover the pan.

  2. Bake for at least 1 hour.

  3. Baste 5 times with butter-and-water.

Make the gravy and serve

  1. Transfer the shad to a hot serving dish.

  2. Make the gravy by stirring lemon juice and browned flour mixed with cold water into the pan juices. Boil the gravy sharply.

  3. Serve the gravy in a gravy boat.

  4. Garnish the shad with lemon slices and bruised parsley.

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

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

  4. Butter + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Parsley + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Butter and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Fine roe-shad
The main fish, whose flesh is cooked gently inside the covered pan.
Breadcrumbs
Bind the forcemeat, absorbing juices so the stuffing stays moist rather than dry.
Fat salt pork
Adds fat to the forcemeat, keeping the stuffing moist and savoury as it bakes.
Browned flour
Thickens the pan juices into gravy and adds a toasted, nutty flavour.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the gravy and balances the richness of the fish.

The step that matters

Bake for at least 1 hour. Shad is a bony fish, and cooking it through gently until the flesh flakes helps it become tender and safe to eat. Covering the pan keeps steam around the fish so it does not dry out.

“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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