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Salad of Shad Roe and Cucumber
Cook two shad roes with an onion, sliced, and a bay leaf, in salted, acidulated water twenty minutes; drain, and marinate with about two tablespoonfuls of oil, one tablespoonful of lemon juice and a dash of pepper and salt. When cold cut in small cubes. Rub the salad-bowl with a clove of garlic cut in halves. Cut a thoroughly chilled cucumber in dice; put the cucumber on a bed of lettuce leaves in the bottom of the bowl, and the roe, well drained, above; mask with mayonnaise, - nearly a cup will be required, -in the top insert a few heart leaves of lettuce, and place around the centre of the mound a circle of cucumber slices overlapping one another; or alternate these with lozenges cut from pickled beet.
A composed salad from the era when shad roe was a spring staple in eastern American markets. The technique is sound; the main adjustments are sourcing and a lighter hand with the poaching.
- Acidulated waterSimply water with lemon juice or a splash of vinegar added, a spoonful or so per quart. The acid is generally held to firm the roe's outer membrane and help keep the colour pale.
- Handle the roe sets wholeA pair of shad roe is joined by a thin membrane that holds the eggs together. Poach it intact and barely simmering, never boiling, or the sacs burst and the eggs cloud the water into grit.
- Twenty minutes is for a large pairTwenty minutes suits a large pair -- a big double set may need the full time, while small roes will be firm through in rather less. Test by pressing the centre; it should feel set, not spongy. Overcooked roe turns chalky and no dressing will rescue it.
- Marinate warm, cube coldDrained roe takes up the oil and lemon more readily while still warm, but it will only cut into clean cubes once thoroughly chilled and firm. Give it a good spell in the refrigerator first.
- MayonnaiseNearly a cup of a stiff, hand-made mayonnaise was intended, thick enough to "mask" the mound and hold its shape. A commercial mayonnaise loosened with a spoonful of lemon juice works; a thin dressing will simply run off into the lettuce.
- CucumberCucumbers of the period were often seedy and watery. Peel, seed and dice, then salt lightly and drain before chilling, or the water will thin the mayonnaise on the plate.
- If shad roe is unavailableIt is a short seasonal item and restricted in some Atlantic states. Herring roe or poached, flaked firm white fish gives a similar texture in the same construction, though not the same faintly mineral flavor.
- YieldTwo roe sets and one cucumber serve four as a first course, or two as a lunch dish.
Shad ran up the rivers of the American Atlantic coast in enormous spring shoals, and for much of the nineteenth century shad and shad roe were cheap, seasonal, and eagerly awaited — the roe often prized above the bony fish itself, and commonly fried in bacon fat or poached and served with lemon. Its appearance here, cubed and masked with mayonnaise under a crown of lettuce hearts, suggests the influence of French service on American cookery around the turn of the twentieth century: the salad is built as an architectural mound and finished with cut garnishes, beet lozenges and overlapping cucumber, in the manner of a hotel garde-manger rather than a home cook. The garlic-rubbed bowl is a French touch of roughly the same period, when many English-language cookbooks still treated garlic as something to be hinted at rather than eaten. Atlantic shad stocks declined sharply over the twentieth century through damming, pollution and overfishing, and the fishery is now closed or tightly limited in a number of states, which is why a dish once considered ordinary spring fare has become a delicacy that is hard to find.