Broiled Shad
Clean the fish, split down the back, wash in cold water, and wipe it dry. Brush lightly with melted butter, dust with salt and pepper, and broil over a clear fire or under the gas flame. When the inside is done and nicely browned, turn and broil slightly on the skin side.
Serve with a maitre d'hotel sauce, or, if preferred, a bechamel or Hollandaise.
A plain nineteenth-century treatment of a very rich, very bony fish. Almost everything here still works under a modern broiler; the main adjustments are heat management and knowing what to do about the bones.
- The bones are the real problemShad carries rows of fine intramuscular bones that are awkward to pick out at table. Long slow baking was one traditional answer to them; boning the fish was skilled knife work usually left to the fishmonger. Ask for a boned shad fillet if you can get one, and expect to pay for the knife work.
- Split down the backThis means butterflying the whole fish through the backbone so it opens flat, skin side down, rather than filleting it. The fish then broils in one piece and holds together better than two loose fillets.
- "A clear fire" and the gas flameA clear fire is coals burned down past the smoke, with no flame licking the fish. In a modern oven that is the broiler at its highest setting with the rack about four inches below the element, preheated for a good five minutes.
- TimingThe recipe gives none. A butterflied shad of two to three pounds needs roughly six to eight minutes flesh side up, then two or three minutes on the skin, until the thickest part reaches 145F. Shad is oily and forgiving, but past that point it dries and the flakes shred.
- Fat and flare-upsShad renders a lot of oil. Broil on a rack over a foil-lined pan so the drippings fall clear of the heat, and keep the door ajar on an electric broiler if smoke builds.
- Maitre d'hotelIn this period that usually means maitre d'hotel butter: softened butter worked with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, then chilled and sliced onto the hot fish. Bechamel and hollandaise are the richer alternatives the author offers for a more formal table.
- YieldShad commonly run three to five pounds whole; a fish of that size will serve about three or four once the head, frame and bones are accounted for.
- SourcingAmerican shad runs are much reduced from their nineteenth-century abundance and several fisheries are closed or restricted. Buy from a supplier who can tell you where it came from, or substitute another oily fish such as bluefish or mackerel, which take the same treatment.
American shad is an anadromous herring that runs up the Atlantic rivers to spawn in spring, and for most of the nineteenth century it was one of the cheapest and most abundant fish on the eastern seaboard -- the Delaware, Hudson, Connecticut and Susquehanna all supported large seasonal fisheries. Planked and broiled shad were fixtures of spring shad-bake gatherings along those rivers, and the roe was prized above the flesh. Its appearance in a general household compendium of this kind, with no fuss and three alternative French sauces, marks a fish that was both everyday enough to need no introduction and good enough to serve to company. The heavy overfishing and river damming of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries turned that abundance around; a dish that once cost pennies is now a specialty item.