Name: Shad-roe Sauce
Ingredients: 2 shad-roes; 1 teaspoon salt; White Sauce (see separate recipe); 1 tablespoon chopped parsley; Cayenne pepper to taste; Coarse sea salt to taste; Juice of 1 lemon

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

Wash the shad-roes in cold water.
Place them in a saucepan with salt and cover with boiling water.
Cover the saucepan and simmer for 15 minutes.
Drain, skin, and mash the shad-roes finely.

Make the sauce

Prepare a White Sauce and mix in the mashed roes.
Add lemon juice, chopped parsley, cayenne, and salt.
Bring the mixture 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.

Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Roe + saucetop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together142 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
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 roe: Forms the main body of the sauce and gives it its rich, savory flavor.
White sauce: Provides a smooth, creamy base that carries the mashed roe.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the rich roe and cream.

“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.