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Shad Roe Croquettes
Two shad roes; one teacup cream; yolks of two eggs; one tablespoon butter; two tablespoons flour; one teaspoon lemon juice; one tablespoon parsley chopped fine; quarter of a nutmeg grated; cayenne pepper and salt to taste. Wash the shad roes, then put them on the stove, in a saucepan of boiling water; add a teaspoon of salt, cover and let simmer slowly a few minutes; then remove the skin and mash them; heat the cream, rub the butter and flour together, add to the cream while boiling, stir until thick. Then add yolks, remove from the stove, add all other ingredients, thoroughly mix, and turn in an earthen dish to cool; when cold form into croquettes, cone shape, or rolls, dip in beaten egg, roll in bread crumbs, and fry in boiling lard.
A thick cream panade bound with egg yolks, chilled hard and fried — the technique matters more than the ingredient list. Everything hinges on the mixture being stiff enough to hold when it hits the fat.
- How much roeShad roe is sold as a "set" or pair — two connected lobes from one fish. "Two shad roes" most likely means two sets, roughly 12 to 16 oz total, though the original is genuinely ambiguous on this point.
- TeacupA period teacup is smaller than a modern measuring cup, though sources vary: read it as somewhere between about 1/2 and 3/4 cup of cream rather than a full one. Extra liquid here means croquettes that slump in the pan.
- Poach the roe gentlyThe membrane bursts and the eggs pop if the water is at a rolling boil. Keep it at a bare simmer for 5 to 8 minutes, until the lobes are firm and opaque through, then cool before peeling the skin and the heavier veins away.
- The binding is the whole dishThe butter-and-flour paste stirred into boiling cream should thicken to the point where a spoon leaves a clean track across the bottom of the pan. Add the yolks off direct heat so they thicken without scrambling, and if the mixture still looks loose, return it to low heat and cook it down further.
- Chill longer than "when cold"Spread the mixture no more than an inch deep and refrigerate at least four hours, preferably overnight. A cold, firm mass shapes cleanly; a merely cool one will not.
- Frying temperature"Boiling lard" means fat hot enough that a crumb sizzles instantly — in modern terms roughly 350 to 375F. Fry in small batches for 2 to 3 minutes, until deep gold; the interior is already cooked, so you are only crisping the crust.
- NutmegA quarter of a whole nutmeg grates out to roughly 1/2 teaspoon, which is assertive. A scant 1/4 teaspoon suits most modern palates alongside the lemon and cayenne.
- YieldExpect eight to ten croquettes, enough for four as a first course with a lemon wedge or a plain cream sauce.
- SourcingAmerican shad stocks are far thinner than they were when this was written and several Atlantic states have closed their fisheries, so roe appears only briefly in spring and often frozen. Buy from a fishmonger who can say where it came from.
Shad ran up the Atlantic rivers — the Delaware, Hudson, Connecticut, Susquehanna — in enormous spring shoals, and for nineteenth-century American cooks the arrival of shad and its roe marked the season as clearly as asparagus did. The fish is notoriously bony, which is often given as the reason for planking and long baking; the roe, by contrast, needed no such trouble and was prized as the finer part, sold in pairs and, by most accounts, commonly parboiled and fried in bacon fat. Turning it into croquettes reflects the taste of the Butterick era for the French-derived croquette, in which almost any cooked fish, poultry or vegetable was bound in a stiff cream sauce, chilled, breaded and deep-fried — a dish that stretched an expensive ingredient and made an elegant showing at a lady's luncheon. Its filing under "Sauces" here is not as odd as it looks: the thick béchamel is the working part of the recipe, and the roe is little more than what gets folded into it.