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Baked Roe Shad Stuffed

A whole shad stuffed with a roe and breadcrumb mixture, baked with bacon and flavored with tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, and sherry.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 17 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 roe

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

  2. Skim the roe.

  3. Mix the roe with bread crumbs, butter, parsley, canned tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, salt, and pepper.

Stuff and bake

  1. Clean the shad and pat dry.

  2. Rub salt and pepper inside the shad.

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

  4. Top the shad with slices of bacon.

  5. Baste the shad with a mixture of butter, hot water, lemon juice or vinegar, and tomato ketchup.

Serve

  1. Before serving, remove the bacon.

  2. 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 a moist, savory stuffing that sets lightly when mixed with crumbs and butter.
Dry bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind the roe into a stuffing that holds its shape.
Butter
Adds fat and richness to the stuffing and basting mixture, promoting browning.
Canned tomatoes
Add acidity and moisture to the stuffing.
Fat bacon
Bastes the fish with melting fat and flavour as it cooks over the top.

The step that matters

Baste the shad during baking. Basting with butter and liquid keeps the lean fish moist as it cooks and helps the surface brown evenly, so the flesh does not dry out before the stuffing is heated through.

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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