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Baked Shad

A baked fish dish with a stuffing of shad head and cold boiled ham, seasoned with salt, pepper, cloves, herbs, egg, butter, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and lemon match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,047 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. 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. Make a stuffing with the head of the shad and cold boiled ham.

  2. Season the stuffing with coarse sea salt, black pepper, ground cloves, and sweet herbs.

  3. Moisten the stuffing with 1 egg.

Bake and serve

  1. Stuff the fish, rubbing some on the outside.

  2. Place the fish in a deep pan with its tail toward its mouth.

  3. Pour water and 1 tablespoon of butter over the fish.

  4. Bake at 350°F (175°C) for two hours.

  5. Make a gravy.

  6. Pour the gravy around the fish, garnishing with sliced lemons.

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

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

  2. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  3. Clove + lemontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,150 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Ham + buttertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,475 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-decenal (waxy, orange).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg
Binds the stuffing so it holds together when stuffed into the fish.
Butter
Adds richness and helps the fish surface brown and stay moist in the oven.
Cold boiled ham
Adds savory, salty flavor to the stuffing.

The step that matters

Bake at 350°F (175°C) for two hours. Shad is full of fine bones and delicate flesh; baking long enough to cook it through while adding water and butter keeps it moist and prevents it from drying out.

Swap the clove

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ham, pepper, egg, butter, lemon):

  1. Parsleyfits better
  2. Tarragonfits better
  3. Thymefits better
  4. Clovethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ham, pepper, egg, butter, lemon. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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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