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Shad, French Way of Cooking
"This fish," says M. Ude, "is held in high estimation in France, and especially in Paris. It must be scaled, emptied, and washed nicely. Next it is to be steeped in a little oil with pepper and salt. It is necessary to split it, that the salt may penetrate. Broil it on both sides over a slow fire. It will be done in the course of one hour. When done, let it be served with caper sauce, or with sorrel."
A whole shad, split and grilled over low heat, dressed with capers or sorrel. The instructions are sound in outline; the timing is the part to ignore.
- The hour is far too longA split shad of three to five pounds is cooked through over gentle coals in roughly 20 to 30 minutes, and thick fillets in 10 to 15. Ude's hour would have been over a slow open fire at some distance; at modern grill or broiler heat the flesh dries and the oil scorches long before that.
- "A slow fire"Low, steady radiant heat: coals raked to one side, or a gas grill at a low setting (roughly 300-325F is a reasonable modern approximation, though the original gives no temperature) with the fish set away from the flame. Shad is oily enough that fierce heat causes flare-ups.
- Split, not filletedThe fish is opened out so it lies flat and the salt reaches the interior; this is usually taken to mean butterflying along the backbone, skin down. Leave the skin on: it holds the soft flesh together on the grate and can be lifted away at the table.
- The bonesShad has intramuscular Y-bones in several rows that no amount of cooking removes. Traditional treatment is either long slow cooking or careful boning by a fishmonger; a split grilled shad is eaten by working the flesh off the bone in strips.
- The steeping"A little oil with pepper and salt" is a short marinade, 30 minutes to an hour in the refrigerator, not an overnight cure. Its job is to season and to keep the flesh from sticking.
- SorrelNot a garnish but a sauce — sorrel stewed down in butter until it collapses into a sharp green purée. Its acidity cuts the oiliness of the fish, and it is the classic French partner. Sorrel is a spring green sold at farmers' markets; young spinach with lemon is a poor substitute but the usual one.
- SourcingAmerican shad stocks are much reduced and several Atlantic fisheries are closed or tightly limited. Buy from a fishmonger who can say where it came from, or substitute another oily fish that grills well, such as mackerel or bluefish, at the same low heat.
- YieldOne shad of three to four pounds, split, serves four.
The "M. Ude" quoted here is Louis Eustache Ude, a French chef who worked in England for the Earl of Sefton and later ran the kitchens at Crockford's club in London; his The French Cook (1813) went through many editions and was still being quarried by British compilers like Cassell's decades later. Shad — alose — runs up the Loire, the Gironde and the Seine in spring, and the Paris esteem Ude describes was seasonal esteem: the fish arrived for a few weeks and then was gone. The pairing with sorrel is old enough that a folk explanation attaches to it, namely that the acid of the sorrel softens or dissolves the fish's notorious fine bones; that is generally repeated rather than demonstrated, and the more likely reason is simply that a sharp green sauce suits a rich, oily fish. A closely related shad runs in the rivers of the American east coast, where planked shad and shad roe became spring fixtures, which is part of why an English compiler bothered to reprint a French method for it.