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To Barbecue a Shad
Split the back of the fish, pepper and salt it, and put on the gridiron with the skin down.
Baste the upper side of the fish with butter; brown a little piece of butter with a small quantity of flour, and when brown add pepper, salt and a little water.
Dish in a tureen.--Mrs.J.W.S.
A spring shad, split flat, cooked skin-down over coals with a small butter-and-flour sauce served alongside. Most of the work is in the fish itself.
- "Barbecue" means the fire, not a sauceThe recipe calls only for a gridiron, i.e. direct cooking over a bed of coals. A charcoal grill with the grate set 4-5 inches above a moderate bed of coals is the closest modern equivalent; a stovetop grill pan or a broiler will do at some cost in smoke.
- Splitting the backThe fish is butterflied through the backbone so it opens flat and lies skin-down in one piece, not filleted. A fishmonger will do this if asked. Scale it and leave the skin on -- it is the only thing between the flesh and the coals.
- Shad bonesAmerican shad carries several rows of fine floating Y-bones that no amount of cooking dissolves. Boning a shad is a specialist job; either buy it boned or accept that diners will pick. The roe, if the fish has it, is traditionally cooked separately.
- Cook skin-down and leave it aloneThe instruction to put it on skin-down is the hinge. The skin and fat shield the flesh; the fish is never turned. A 3-4 lb split shad takes roughly 20-30 minutes over moderate coals with the lid down, until the thickest part flakes and reads about 145F.
- The basting butterMelted butter brushed on repeatedly keeps the exposed side from drying, since nothing else protects it. Use clarified butter if flare-ups are a problem; whole butter's milk solids will scorch and smoke.
- The sauceBrowning butter with "a small quantity of flour" makes a brown roux; the recipe gives no quantities, so as a modern starting point try about 2 tablespoons each per cup of liquid. Add the water gradually off the heat to avoid lumps, then simmer a few minutes to cook out the raw flour. Water was ordinary here; fish stock is better.
- "Dish in a tureen"Most likely the sauce, rather than the fish, goes into the tureen, though the text does not say so outright; on that reading the shad is served from its own dish and the sauce passed separately.
- YieldA whole shad of 3-4 lb serves four generously, allowing for the bones and the head.
Shad ran up the Chesapeake tributaries and the James, Rappahannock and Potomac every spring in numbers that made them a seasonal fixture rather than a luxury, and Virginia cookery treated them accordingly -- planked, baked long and slow to soften the bones, or split and grilled as here. Housekeeping in Old Virginia, compiled by Marion Cabell Tyree and published in 1878, is a collection of contributed receipts from named Virginia housekeepers, which is why this one carries only the initials of its donor and assumes the reader already knows what a gridiron and a bed of coals will do. The word barbecue in this context means open-fire cooking over coals, a usage older than and separate from the sauced barbecue of later American cooking. Shad populations have fallen sharply since the nineteenth century through damming and overfishing, and the fish that was once cheap enough for everyday spring eating is now a regional seasonal specialty where it is available at all.