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Baked Shad
Pare and scale a small shad, place it on a well buttered deep baking-dish and season with one pinch of salt and one half pinch of pepper, adding two finely-chopped shallots and one-half wineglassful of white wine. Cover the whole with a piece of buttered paper and cook in a moderate oven for twenty-five minutes. When done, pour the liquor into a saucepan, add one-half pint of German sauce, a pinch of finely-chopped chervil and a small quantity of spinach: cook for three minutes longer, pour a little of it through a strainer over the fish and serve the balance in a sauceboat. Baked Shad, American Style Clean a shad by drawing the entrails through the gills and wash and dry it. Prepare a stuffing with breadcrumbs, salt, pepper and butter, moisten with egg to bind and stuff the fish with it; place it in a baking-dish over slices of uncooked potatoes, pour in sufficient fish broth to moisten, cover with buttered paper and bake. Serve with a quantity of rich sauce or thickened stock in a sauceboat.
Two versions of the same fish: a French treatment finished with sauce allemande, and a plainer stuffed-and-baked one. Both assume a cook who already knows what shad is and how to handle its bones.
- German sauceThis is sauce allemande — a velouté (light stock thickened with white roux) finished off the heat with a liaison of egg yolks and cream, sharpened with lemon. Half a pint is one cup. It must not boil once the yolks go in or it will curdle; that is the hinge of the first version.
- The bonesShad carries several rows of floating intramuscular bones that no amount of cooking dissolves. A whole baked shad is eaten carefully, or the fish is professionally boned first. A skilled fishmonger can bone it; ask when ordering.
- "Pare and scale"Pare here means trim the fins and tail, not peel. Scale from tail to head, and gut it — the second recipe's trick of drawing the entrails through the gills keeps the belly intact so the stuffing stays put.
- Moderate ovenRoughly 350°F by modern reckoning, though the book gives no temperatures. Twenty-five minutes suits a small shad; go by an internal temperature of 145°F at the thickest point rather than the clock, since market shad varied considerably in size.
- WineglassfulA wineglass is usually reckoned at about two fluid ounces in cookery of this period, so half a glass is roughly one ounce, or two tablespoons, of dry white wine. It is there to make the pan liquor, not to poach the fish.
- Buttered paperA cartouche of buttered parchment cut to the dish. It traps steam and keeps the surface from drying without sealing the fish as foil would. Butter the side facing the fish.
- "A small quantity of spinach"Blanched, squeezed dry and finely chopped, added at the end for colour and a faint green sweetness. Three minutes is all it needs; longer and it turns grey in an egg-yolk sauce.
- Fish brothFor the American version, a light fumet from the head and frame, or bottled clam juice cut with water. The potato slices underneath soak it up and become the starch course.
- YieldA small whole shad serves two to three, allowing for the bones and the head.
Shad — Alosa sapidissima, a herring that runs up the Atlantic rivers to spawn each spring — was one of the great seasonal events of the American table, and a New York kitchen in the 1890s would have had access to the Hudson and Delaware runs. The page carries two treatments: a European service dressed with sauce allemande and chervil, and a plainer one labelled "American Style." The French version follows orthodox practice of the period — cook in the dish, build the sauce from the liquor, strain a little over and send the rest separately — while the "American Style" stuffing of buttered breadcrumbs bound with egg resembles mixtures used for other baked fish in household cookbooks of the day. Shad runs have declined sharply since, and the fish is far less common in markets than it was when this book was written.