Skip to main content
Main

Baked Shad

A whole shad stuffed with breadcrumb mixture, baked until cooked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Pepper and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 34,122 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Baked 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Stuff the fish

  1. In a bowl, mix bread crumbs, salt, pepper, butter, parsley, and beaten egg.

  2. Stuff the mixture into the shad and sew it up or tie it with string.

Bake

  1. Place the shad in a baking dish, pour water and a little butter over it.

  2. Bake for 1 to 1¼ hours until cooked through.

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 + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

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

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

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

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

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

  4. Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together28,563 recipes

    Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Bread + parsleytop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,588 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

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

What each ingredient does

Shad
The whole fish is the main dish, cooked through by baking around the stuffing.
Bread crumbs
Absorb moisture and bind with the egg to form a soft, tender stuffing.
Egg
Binds the bread crumb stuffing so it holds together during baking.
Butter
Adds richness and moisture to the stuffing and the fish.

The step that matters

Bake for 1 to 1¼ hours until cooked through. Fish cooks quickly and can dry out if overbaked, while underbaking leaves it unsafe. Checking that the flesh flakes easily at the thickest part helps you hit the point of doneness.

Swap the parsley

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

  1. Parsleythe original
  2. Nutmegfits about as well
  3. Sagefits less well
  4. Tarragonfits less well

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

More baked shad recipes

Dressing 3 See all 114 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes