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Planked Shad
Shad are in season from January to June. Jack shad are usually cheaper than roe shad. Clean and split three-pound shad, place skin down on heated oak plank one inch thick, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and brush over with butter. Bake twenty-five to thirty minutes in hot oven or in gas stove under broiling flame. Garnish with parsley and lemon. Serves 6.
A whole split fish cooked flat on a heated hardwood board — the technique is simple, but it depends entirely on the plank being properly prepared and screaming hot before the fish goes on.
- The plankUse untreated oak, hickory or maple at least an inch thick, never plywood, pressure-treated lumber or anything varnished. Season a new plank by rubbing it with oil and heating it empty in the oven for half an hour; heat it through again immediately before the fish goes on, so the skin sets on contact rather than sticking.
- "Hot oven"In cookbooks of this period this is usually taken as somewhere around 400-450F. At the lower end a three-pound split shad may need the full thirty minutes; under a broiler, start checking well before the stated time and expect scorching at the thin belly edges.
- DonenessShad is a fat fish and forgiving, but 145°F at the thickest part of the shoulder is the mark. Past that the flesh dries and the interstitial fat renders out onto the board.
- Jack shad and roe shad"Jack" is the male, smaller and leaner; "roe shad" is the female, sold with her egg sacs, which were the prized part and account for the price difference. If you buy a roe shad, cook the roe separately — it needs gentle heat and will turn granular at broiler temperature.
- The bonesShad has a notorious lattice of floating intermuscular bones that no amount of baking dissolves. Ask the fishmonger for a boned split shad, or plan on serving it as it comes and warning the table.
- Splitting"clean and split" means gutted, scaled and opened out flat along the backbone so the fish lies skin-down in one sheet; the backbone may or may not be taken out. That flat presentation is the point of planking.
- ServingSix portions from a three-pound fish makes for modest helpings once the bones are allowed for, which suggests the shad was not the only dish. Bring the plank to the table on a folded cloth or a trivet -- it will be as hot as the oven and will mark a finished surface.
- AvailabilityThe January-to-June season held when Atlantic shad runs supported a large commercial fishery. Stocks are much reduced and several states restrict or prohibit the harvest, so supply is now local, brief and sometimes nonexistent.
Planked shad belongs to the shad-bake tradition of the Delaware, Hudson and Connecticut rivers, where the spring run of Alosa sapidissima — the species name means "most delicious" — was met with communal outdoor cookery. The fish was nailed to boards and set upright around a bed of coals, a method generally traced to Native practice along the same rivers and taken up by colonial and later riverside communities; the annual shad planking became a fixture of church suppers and, in Virginia, of political gatherings. This version moves the board indoors to a gas range: a riverbank ritual reduced to one plank, one broiler and thirty minutes. The note that shad run January to June is a reminder of how abundant the fish once was on eastern markets, and how sharply that has changed.