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Baked Shad

A whole shad stuffed with bread crumbs, butter, parsley, and egg yolk, baked and served with a sauce of catsup, sherry, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 15 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. In a bowl, mix bread crumbs, salt, pepper, butter, parsley, and beaten egg yolk.

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

Bake

  1. Place the stuffed shad in a baking dish, pour a little water and additional butter over it.

  2. Bake for 1 to 1¼ hours, basting occasionally.

Make the sauce and serve

  1. For the sauce, boil the gravy from the baking dish.

  2. Stir in catsup, brown flour mixed with cold water, lemon juice, and sherry.

  3. Serve the sauce in a sauce-boat alongside the shad, garnished with lemon slices and watercress.

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 + watercresstop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together469 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

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

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bread crumbs
Absorb the butter and egg yolk to form a moist, cohesive stuffing.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and bastes the fish to keep it moist as it bakes.
Beaten egg yolk
Binds the stuffing so it holds together inside the fish.
Brown flour
Thickens the pan gravy into a sauce.
Sherry
Adds acidity and aroma to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Bake for 1 to 1¼ hours, basting occasionally. Fish is cooked when it turns opaque and flakes easily, and basting keeps the surface from drying out while the pan juices form the base for the sauce. Overbaking dries the flesh, so check it during the window rather than only at the end.

“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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