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To Bake Shad

A whole shad stuffed with bread crumbs, herbs, butter, and egg, baked and garnished with roe, parsley, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and summer savory match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 241 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

To Bake 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 fish

  1. Clean the fish thoroughly.

  2. If the fish is male, remove the backbone.

  3. If the fish is female, remove the roe.

Stuff and bake

  1. Make a stuffing with the bread crumbs, parsley, summer savory, butter, egg yolk, salt, and pepper.

  2. Stuff the cavities of the fish with the mixture.

  3. Top the fish with some egg and fine bread crumbs.

  4. Place the fish in a pan with 1 pint of hot water.

  5. Baste well and bake gently at 350°F (175°C) for about 1 hour.

Garnish and serve

  1. Boil the roe.

  2. Garnish the dish with slices of roe, small sprigs of parsley, and thin slices of lemon.

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 + summer savorytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together241 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Parsley + peppertop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

  3. Summer savory + peppertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together671 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  4. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Bread + eggtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

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, cooked whole so its flesh stays moist in the oven.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the stuffing, giving it a soft, cohesive texture.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches the stuffing and helps the crumbs brown lightly.
Raw egg yolk
Binds the stuffing together and adds richness to the crumb mixture.

The step that matters

Bake gently and baste well. Gentle heat cooks the fish through without drying or toughening its flesh, and regular basting with the hot water keeps the surface moist while the stuffing heats evenly.

Swap the summer savory

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

  1. Thymefits about as well
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Summer savorythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against bread, parsley, butter, egg, pepper. 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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