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Planked Shad

A whole shad is cooked on a heated oak board, seasoned with salt, pepper, and butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Pepper and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 21% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 85,593 recipes. Both carry trans-2-nonenal, which smells cardboard, fatty. The science ↓

Planked Shad

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the board

  1. Clean the oak board well.

  2. Stand the board before the fire until very hot but not charred.

Prepare the fish

  1. Wipe the shad dry.

  2. Split the shad down the back.

  3. Season the shad with coarse sea salt and black pepper.

  4. Fasten the shad to the board, skin side down.

Cook and serve

  1. Stand the shad up before the fire, head down.

  2. Reverse the position of the shad when the juice starts to flow.

  3. Continue to change the position until the fish is thoroughly cooked, taking care to prevent burning.

  4. Butter the shad when done.

  5. Place the shad on the table without removing it from the board.

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 + buttertop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together85,593 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

Shad
Forms the main body of the dish; its flesh cooks through as it is turned before the fire.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the finished fish after it is cooked.

The step that matters

Reversing the shad when the juice starts to flow. Turning the fish at this point lets the juices redistribute and keeps the flesh moist, while also helping it cook evenly and avoid scorching against the fire.

“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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