Aked Shad
Stuff with bread crumbs, salt, pepper and parsley mixed with the beaten yolk of egg. Sew the fish up or tie it round with string. Pour a little water and butter over it. and bake one hour or one and one-fourth hour, basting often. Garnish with parsley and lemon slices. Boil up the gravy the fish was baked in, putting in one large tablespoon of catsup, one tablespoon of brown flour mixed in cold water, the juice of one lemon and one glass of sherry or Madeira, and serve this sauce in a boat.
A whole stuffed fish with a sherry pan sauce, written for a cook who already knew what size shad to buy and how hot her oven ran. The gaps are all in the numbers.
- The missing oven temperatureNo heat is given. A stuffed whole fish of this size wants a moderate oven, 350-375F. The stated hour to hour and a quarter suits a shad of about 3 to 4 lb; the fish is done when the thickest flesh beside the backbone reaches 145F and the flesh parts from the bone.
- What shad is, and the bonesAmerican shad is a large, oily herring relative with an intricate lattice of floating intramuscular bones. An hour in the oven will not soften them; the old trick of baking shad for several hours to break the bones down needs far longer cooking than this recipe allows. A fishmonger who knows the fish may bone it on request, which is worth asking for; otherwise warn everyone at the table. If shad is unavailable, a whole bluefish, mackerel or striped bass of similar weight behaves the same way in the oven.
- Brown flourThis means plain flour toasted dry in a skillet over moderate heat until it is the colour of hazelnut shells, then slaked with cold water to a smooth paste. Toasting it gives the sauce colour and a nuttier taste, but weakens its thickening power, so use a generous tablespoon.
- CatsupIn this period this was as likely to be mushroom or walnut catsup as tomato: thin, dark, salty and closer to a mushroom soy than to the sweet tomato sauce sold today. Mushroom ketchup or a spoonful of Worcestershire gives the intended savoury depth; modern tomato ketchup makes the sauce noticeably sweet.
- One glass of wineA wine glass of the period is about 2 fl oz, so roughly a quarter cup of sherry or Madeira. Use a dry amontillado or a Sercial rather than a cream sherry, and let the sauce boil a minute or two after it goes in to cook off the raw spirit.
- The stuffingDry breadcrumbs, salt, pepper and chopped parsley bound with a raw yolk make a very lean forcemeat. Loosen it with a little melted butter or some of the pan liquid so it does not bake into a dry plug, and pack it loosely; check that the stuffing itself is hot through when the fish is done.
- Sewing and bastingKitchen twine wrapped around the fish at three or four points is easier than needle and thread and easier to remove at the table. There is very little liquid in the pan, so baste every ten to fifteen minutes or add a splash of water partway through, or the drippings will scorch and the sauce will taste burnt.
- YieldA 3 to 4 lb stuffed shad serves four to six. The sauce makes about a cup, which is right for that number in a boat passed at the table.
Shad, Alosa sapidissima, ran up the rivers of the Atlantic seaboard by the million each spring to spawn, and the shad run was one of the fixed points of the American culinary year — cheap, fatty, and briefly everywhere from the Carolinas to the Connecticut. Its Latin name, given by Alexander Wilson, who described the species as Clupea sapidissima in 1811, translates as "most delicious," and the roe is often said to have been prized more highly than the flesh. The Butterick company, better known for dress patterns, published its cook book for the same audience of practical middle-class housekeepers who bought its magazines, which explains the shape of this entry: no shopping guidance, no oven setting, just the sequence of operations for a fish anyone in season could get hold of. The sherry-and-catsup gravy, thickened with browned flour, is a domesticated descendant of the English fish sauces of the previous century. Overfishing, dams and pollution had already begun to shrink the runs by the time this book was printed, and shad is now scarce enough in many rivers that fisheries are closed or tightly restricted — worth checking before shopping.