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Shad-roe Sauce

A sauce made from shad roes, white sauce, lemon juice, parsley, cayenne pepper, and salt.

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

Prepare the roe

  1. Wash the shad roes in cold water.

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

  3. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.

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

Make the sauce

  1. Prepare a white sauce and add the mashed roes to it.

  2. Mix well, then add lemon juice, 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
Provide the main flavor and a rich, creamy body when mashed into the sauce.
White sauce
Forms the smooth base that carries the roe and gives the sauce its body.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the rich roe and balances the sauce.

The step that matters

Simmering the roe. Simmering gently in salted water cooks the roe through without toughening it. Boiling hard can make the delicate roe firm and grainy, which hurts the smooth texture the sauce needs.

“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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