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Shad Roe Salad
Wash one set of shad roes, put them in a saucepan, cover with boiling water, add a teaspoonful of salt, cover the saucepan and simmer gently twenty minutes. Be careful not to boil or the skin will burst. When done, lift from the water carefully with a skimmer and stand aside until perfectly cold. When ready to serve, remove the outside skin, and with a silver knife cut the roe into thin slices. Put a slice of onion in the centre of a dish and arrange around it crisp lettuce leaves. Heap the shad roe in the centre and pass it with a bowl of Mayonnaise dressing.
Shrimps, sardines, and anchovies may also be served on lettuce leaves with Mayonnaise.
A cold poached-roe salad that depends almost entirely on how gently the roe is cooked. Everything else is assembly.
- Keep it below a boilThis is the hinge. Shad roe is a sac of eggs held in a thin membrane, and a rolling boil ruptures it, scattering the eggs through the water. Hold the water at a bare shiver, around 180F, with the lid on.
- "One set of roes"Shad roe is sold as a pair of lobes joined at one end, and a set means both lobes, typically 8-12 oz together. That serves two as a salad, three at a stretch.
- Twenty minutes is right hereTwenty minutes at a bare simmer -- A whole intact sac is dense and will cook through in the time given, which is longer than many modern cooks would allow but produces a firm roe that slices cleanly when cold. Watch it rather than trusting the clock: a single small lobe may be done in fifteen or less.
- Cool it completely before peelingThe outer membrane strips away cleanly from a thoroughly chilled roe and shreds on a warm one. Chill it several hours, or overnight, and slice only when you are ready to plate.
- The silver knifeSilver is specified in period recipes for delicate pale foods, most likely because carbon-steel blades of the day discoloured them and could leave a metallic taste. Any stainless blade does the job now; a thin, very sharp one gives the cleanest slices.
- The slice of onionThe recipe puts it under the roe, in the centre of the dish, and says nothing about eating it; it reads as garnish and flavouring rather than a portion. A thin round of mild sweet onion, or a few rings of shallot, will be gentler than a strong cooking onion.
- MayonnaisePeriod mayonnaise was raw-yolk emulsion made to order. Homemade is worth it here, but use pasteurised eggs if serving anyone pregnant, elderly or immunocompromised; commercial mayonnaise loosened with lemon juice is an honest substitute.
- SourcingShad roe is a short spring season, roughly March to May, and American shad stocks are depleted enough that several Atlantic river fisheries are closed. Buy from a fishmonger who can tell you where it came from; frozen roe works but is softer after poaching.
American shad is an anadromous fish that runs up the Atlantic rivers in spring, and for most of the nineteenth century the run made it one of the cheapest fish on eastern markets, hauled from the Delaware, the Hudson and the Chesapeake by the boatload. The roe was the prize, and is often said to have been among the first luxuries of spring even when the fish itself was cheap. Recipes of this period seem generally to poach or pan-fry it whole in its membrane, and the cold sliced version served on lettuce with mayonnaise belongs to the late-Victorian vogue for composed salads, in which almost any cold cooked protein could be heaped on greens and passed with a dressing. The closing line here, offering shrimps, sardines and anchovies as alternatives, shows the formula plainly: the salad is a template, and the roe merely the seasonal filling.