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Shad Roe with Celery
Clean a shad roe, cook in boiling, salted, acidulated water twenty minutes, and drain. Plunge into cold water, drain, remove membrane, and separate roe into pieces. Melt three tablespoons butter, add roe, and cook ten minutes; then add one tablespoon butter, one-half cup chopped celery, few drops each onion and lemon juice, and salt and pepper. Serve on pieces of toasted bread.
A short entrée from Fannie Farmer's era, when shad roe arrived every spring and needed no introduction. Two things carry the dish: gentle heat, so the roe does not burst, and celery added late enough to stay crisp.
- Acidulated waterSimply water with acid added — about a tablespoon of lemon juice or white vinegar per quart, plus a teaspoon of salt. It firms the exterior and keeps the roe pale rather than grey.
- Leave the membrane on to poachThe sac holds the eggs together in the water; the recipe removes it only afterwards. Prick it two or three times with a needle first so steam escapes instead of splitting it.
- Twenty minutes is for a full pairTwenty minutes -- The recipe gives one time for 'a shad roe' without specifying size. Twenty minutes suits a large pair; a single small lobe will be firm through sooner. Note that the original calls for boiling water, though many cooks prefer a gentler simmer to keep the sac from splitting.
- Moderate heat in the butterThe poached roe is already cooked; the ten minutes in butter is for colour and flavour. Keep the pan at medium and use a spatter screen — trapped moisture in the eggs pops audibly.
- Butter totalFour tablespoons in all, three at the start and one with the celery. That is a half stick for one roe, which is period-correct; cutting it to two tablespoons and finishing with a squeeze more lemon works.
- Add the celery at the endIt goes in for the last minute or two, off the direct heat if need be. Cooked longer it goes limp and the dish loses the crunch that is the whole point of the pairing.
- "Few drops" of onion juiceGrate a piece of onion and press out the liquid, or substitute a teaspoon of very finely minced shallot softened in the butter. It is meant to season, not to be tasted as onion.
- YieldThe recipe gives no yield; one pair of roe on toast will serve roughly two as a first course, or one as a light main. Serve straight from the pan — reheated shad roe tends to go grainy.
- SourcingAmerican shad runs are managed tightly now and roe shad harvest is closed or restricted in a number of Atlantic states. Buy from a fishmonger in spring; frozen roe, thawed slowly in the refrigerator, poaches acceptably.
Shad ran up the rivers of the eastern seaboard in enormous numbers each spring, and the roe — two joined lobes from a single female — was the prized part, sold by the pair and treated as a delicacy well into the twentieth century. Its brief season made it a fixture of spring menus in eastern cities, and roe was served on toast as a course in its own right. The celery is a characteristic touch of this book's period, when raw or barely cooked celery was often used as a foil to rich food. Shad populations declined sharply through the twentieth century from damming, pollution and overfishing, and the roe that Farmer's readers could buy on any spring morning is now a seasonal specialty item.