Fried Shad-Roe
Wash the roe and cook ten or fifteen minutes in boiling salted water with a tablespoonful of vinegar. Pour off the water and then plunge into cold water. Drain then on a towel and roll in beaten egg and fine cracker crumbs, well seasoned, and fry in very hot fat. Serve with tomato sauce poured around it.
A straightforward parboil-then-fry treatment of shad roe, the sort of dish that appeared every spring in American cookbooks. The instructions are sound; what needs filling in are the temperatures and the handling of the membrane.
- The hinge: the membraneEach lobe is wrapped in a thin sac that traps steam and can burst. Prick it in several places with a needle before it goes into the water, and keep the poaching liquid at a bare simmer rather than the hard boil the recipe calls for, which helps the sac stay intact.
- Parboiling timeTen to fifteen minutes suits a large pair of lobes; small ones need eight to ten. The roe should firm up and turn opaque grey-pink throughout but still yield when pressed. Overcooked shad roe turns dry and grainy, and the frying step adds more heat.
- The vinegarA tablespoon in the poaching water firms the exterior and cuts the strong mineral note the roe can carry. Cider or white wine vinegar both work; the flavour does not carry through to the finished dish.
- The cold plungeNot optional. It stops the cooking and, more usefully, makes the lobes firm enough to handle and crumb without tearing. Chill them thoroughly, then dry well or the coating will slide off.
- Cracker crumbsPeriod cracker crumbs meant plain soda or water crackers crushed fine, closer to modern saltines than to anything sweetened. Panko is coarser but works; ordinary dry breadcrumbs give a softer crust.
- "Very hot fat"For pan-frying, 365-375F in about half an inch of fat. Two to three minutes a side is enough to colour the crust, since the roe is already cooked through.
- Yield and servingOne pair of lobes will do for about two as a main course. Bacon and lemon are the more usual accompaniments now; the tomato sauce here is unspecified, but in this period it would most likely have been a plain cooked puree rather than a herbed pasta sauce.
- SourcingShad roe is seasonal, running roughly February to May on the American East Coast, and shad fisheries in several states are closed or restricted. Buy from a fishmonger who can say where it came from; frozen roe is common and takes to this treatment well.