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Baked Shad

Baked shad coated with breadcrumbs and herbs, baked and served with a sauce made from the pan juices, catsup, flour, lemon, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 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

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 stuffing

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

  2. Mix bread crumbs, salt, pepper, butter, parsley, and egg yolk.

  3. Stuff the shad with the mixture and sew it up or tie it with string.

Bake the fish

  1. Pour water and butter over the fish.

  2. Bake for 1 to 1¼ hours.

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

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

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

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

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

Shad
The fish is the main dish, and the stuffing and dressing are built around it.
Bread crumbs
Absorb butter and egg yolk to form a moist, binding stuffing inside the fish.
Egg yolk
Binds the stuffing so it holds together during baking.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing and moisture over the fish.
Brown flour
Thickens the pan gravy into a smooth dressing.
Sherry or madeira wine
Adds acidity and aroma to the dressing.

The step that matters

Boil the gravy before adding the flour mixture. Flour thickens only when heated in liquid, and the starch needs to be fully hydrated and boiled to lose its raw taste and reach full thickness. Adding the cold-water flour mixture to boiling gravy and stirring keeps it smooth instead of lumpy.

“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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