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Fried Shad's Roe
Steep the roe in cold water. (Care should be taken in removing it from the fish not to break it.) Wipe the roe dry, place it in a fryingpan with a small quantity of lard, and fry until nicely done. When cooked place the roe on a folded napkin laid on a hot dish, garnish with parsley, and serve
A three-line recipe that assumes the cook already knows shad roe. The whole job is keeping the paired lobes intact and cooking them through without letting the membrane burst.
- Prick the membrane firstThe sac is a closed bag of eggs; as it heats, steam builds and it can split and spit hot fat. Pierce it in several places with a needle or the tip of a paring knife before it goes in the pan, and keep a lid or splatter screen handy.
- Steeping means a cold-water soakA short soak in cold water draws out blood; the recipe sets no time. Pat it genuinely dry afterward or the fat will erupt.
- Blanch before fryingA number of period cookbooks parboiled roe briefly in barely simmering salted water before frying, and this abbreviated instruction skips it. Without that step the outside can brown before the centre of a thick lobe sets.
- FatLard works and gives a clean flavor; clarified butter or a butter-and-oil mix is the common substitute. Keep the heat at medium — roe scorches and turns grainy over high heat.
- "Until nicely done"Roughly 4 to 5 minutes a side for a medium pair after blanching, longer for a large one. It is done when the lobes are firm to the touch and uniformly opaque; overcooking is the usual fault, producing a dry, chalky, liver-like texture.
- The folded napkinA period plating convention: the linen absorbed frying fat at the table. A rack and paper towels do the absorbing now, and the roe goes onto a warm plate.
- Yield and accompanimentsOne pair of roe serves one generously or two as a first course. Bacon, lemon wedges and brown butter are the standard partners; Oscar's parsley is doing the work of both garnish and sauce here.
- SourcingShad roe is a short spring season, generally March into May on the Atlantic coast, and several states have closed or heavily restricted shad fishing, so supply varies by region. Fishmongers sell it in pairs, fresh or frozen; check that the membrane is unbroken before buying.
Shad roe was a genuine seasonal event in nineteenth-century American cities: the American shad ran up the Hudson, the Delaware and the Chesapeake in spring, and the roe — the paired egg sacs of the female — was prized in its own right. Restaurant menus of the 1890s and 1900s treated its arrival the way they treated the first soft-shell crabs, and the Waldorf, which opened in 1893 with Oscar Tschirky as maître d'hôtel, belonged to that world. The brevity of the instruction is telling: a dish this familiar to the kitchen needed no more than a reminder not to break the sac. Overfishing and dammed spawning rivers thinned the runs through the twentieth century, and shad roe went from a cheap spring commonplace to a specialty item, which is why a recipe that once needed no explanation now does.