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Baked Roe Shad Stuffed

A baked shad stuffed with roe, bread crumbs, butter, parsley, tomatoes, and seasonings, topped with bacon and finished with wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 16 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 ↓

Baked Roe Shad Stuffed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the stuffing

  1. Parboil the roe in salted water with cloves, a bay leaf, and cayenne pepper for about 5 minutes.

  2. Skim the roe and mix it with bread crumbs, butter, parsley, canned tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper.

Stuff and baste

  1. Clean the shad and dry it with a towel, then rub salt and pepper inside.

  2. Stuff the shad with the roe mixture and place it in a greased baking pan.

  3. Top the shad with bacon strips and baste with a mixture of butter, hot water, lemon juice or vinegar, and tomato ketchup.

Finish and serve

  1. Before serving, remove the bacon and pour sherry or Madeira wine over the shad, adding a dash of Tabasco sauce.

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

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

  5. Pepper + tomatotop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together17,923 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

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

What each ingredient does

Roe from shad
Forms the main stuffing, setting into a rich, moist filling inside the fish.
Dry bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the roe mixture so it holds together when stuffed.
Butter
Adds richness to the stuffing and fat for basting, helping the fish brown.
Canned tomatoes
Add moisture and gentle acidity to the stuffing.
Bacon strips
Fat that bastes the shad as it cooks, keeping the surface moist.
Sherry or madeira wine
Adds sweetness and aromatic depth to the finished fish.

The step that matters

Parboiling the roe. Roe proteins set when heated, so overcooking makes it firm and grainy. A short parboil only partly firms it, leaving a soft, moist filling that stays tender once mixed and cooked inside the fish.

Swap the tomato

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

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Capsicumfits about as well
  3. Chivefits about as well
  4. Tomatothe original

Fit is the average pairing score against roe, pepper, bread, butter, parsley, sauce, 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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