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Shad-roe Sauce

A sauce made from shad roe, white sauce, parsley, lemon juice, and spices.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 ↓

Shad-roe Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the roe

  1. Wash the shad roes in cold water.

  2. Place them in a saucepan with 1 teaspoon of salt and cover with boiling water.

  3. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

  4. Drain, skin, and mash the shad roes finely.

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare a white sauce and mix in the mashed roes.

  2. Add a squeeze of lemon juice, 1 tablespoon of chopped parsley, cayenne, and salt.

  3. Bring to a boil and serve with baked or boiled shad.

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. Roe + saucetop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together142 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Roe + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together251 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

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

What each ingredient does

Shad roes
Provides the rich, delicate flavor and the mashed body of the sauce.
White sauce
Supplies a creamy base that carries the mashed roe and gives the sauce its smooth texture.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich, fatty roe and balances the sauce.

The step that matters

Cover and simmer gently, do not boil hard. Roe is delicate, and high heat firms and toughens its proteins and can break the sacs apart. A gentle simmer cooks it through while keeping it tender enough to mash smoothly.

“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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