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Planked Shad
Procure a hardwood board about an inch and a half thick, and split the shad as for broiling, put it on the board with the skin side down and fasten it with some tacks, and put the board over the fire, roasting until done, and rub it every once in a while with a little butter. The plank should be well seasoned and be heated before placing the shad upon it or it will flavor the fish with the wood. When done turn it on to a hot dish, dredge over it some salt and pepper, and cover it with small bits of butter and serve with lemon cut in quarters.
Planking is a live-fire technique, and nearly everything in this recipe depends on the board rather than the fish. A few points on hardware, heat and sourcing.
- The plank comes firstUntreated hardwood only — oak, hickory, maple — never plywood, pressure-treated lumber, or anything with glue or finish. Oscar's instruction to heat the seasoned board before the fish goes on is the hinge of the recipe: a cold or green plank steams and pushes raw sap flavor into the flesh.
- TacksUse plain steel or copper tacks or nails, not galvanized or coated fasteners, which shed zinc compounds when heated. Butcher's twine looped around the board, or simply laying the split fish skin-down on a hot plank set at an angle to the fire, does the same job without hardware.
- "Over the fire" means beside itPlanking is radiant cooking: the board is propped upright or angled a foot or so from a bed of hardwood coals, not laid flat over flame, or the plank ignites. Indoors, the nearest equivalent is a heavy preheated board on a sheet pan under a broiler or in a hot oven; the recipe itself gives no temperature.
- TimingA split shad, commonly 3 to 5 lb, takes roughly 20 to 30 minutes over coals, less under a broiler. It is done when the thickest part flakes at the backbone; the exposed surface dries quickly past that point.
- BastingThe repeated rubbing with butter is not optional garnish; it is what keeps the exposed surface from parching during a long radiant cook.
- The bonesShad carries several rows of floating intramuscular bones that only very long, slow cooking is traditionally said to soften — not a quick roast on a plank. "Split as for broiling" assumes a fishmonger who could bone a shad, a nearly extinct skill. Ask specifically for a boned, butterflied shad, or plan to eat around them.
- SourcingAmerican shad runs are a fraction of their nineteenth-century size and directed fisheries are closed or tightly restricted in many Atlantic states. Fresh shad appears only briefly in spring, in a handful of markets; the roe is sold separately and is now the more common item.
- YieldOne shad of this size serves three to four. Salt, pepper and butter go on at the table, as written, plus lemon — the fish is rich enough that nothing else is wanted.
Shad were once so abundant in the rivers of the eastern seaboard that they were counted a cheap food, and cooking them on a board in front of an open fire is generally traced to Native practice along the Delaware and the Susquehanna, adopted by colonists and carried on into the era of the springtime shad bake. By the time Oscar Tschirky was running the Waldorf's dining rooms at the turn of the century, planked shad and shad roe were fixtures of the spring menu in New York hotels — a seasonal luxury with a rustic pedigree, which is exactly the sort of dish a grand hotel liked to serve. The technique also outlived the fish's abundance as a social ritual: Virginia's political shad plankings, the best known of them at Wakefield, still cook the fish nailed to oak boards beside a wood fire much as described here.