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Shad's Roe Croquettes
Broil the roe for fifteen minutes in salted water, then drain and mash it. Boil one pint of cream; mix four tablespoonfuls of corn starch with one-fourth pound of butter and stir it into the boiling cream; add the strained juice of two lemons, a little salt, cayenne pepper and grated nutmeg and the roe. Boil all together, then take the saucepan off the fire and leave the contents until cool. Shape the mixture into croquettes, dip them in beaten eggs and breadcrumbs, repeating the operation twice. Put the croquettes in a frying basket, plunge them into boiling fat and brown them quickly. When cooked drain the croquettes, place them on a hot dish, garnish with parsley and serve.
A Waldorf spring dish built on a very stiff cream panada. Two things in the text will mislead a modern reader: "broil" here means simmer, and the mixture must be chilled hard before it can be shaped.
- "Broil" means poachSimmering roe in salted water is a parboil, not broiling. Fifteen minutes at a bare simmer is about right for a full pair of shad roe, which sets the eggs firm enough to mash; a smaller single lobe wants closer to eight or ten.
- Prepare the roe firstShad roe comes as a paired sac in a tough membrane. Slit and peel the membrane away after poaching, or it will show up as rubbery threads in the croquette. Prick the sacs before they go into the water so they do not burst.
- The binder is the whole dishFour tablespoons of cornstarch with a quarter pound of butter into a pint of cream makes a paste far thicker than a sauce. Work the starch into the softened butter first so it disperses, and keep stirring hard once it hits the cream or it will seize in lumps. It should pull away from the pan in a mass.
- Add the lemon last and off the boilAdd the lemon after the starch -- Two lemons' juice in a pint of cream can curdle it if the cream is scalding and unthickened. The recipe already adds it after the starch has gone in, which is the safe point; stir it in gently there.
- Chill properly"Leave the contents until cool" is not enough. Spread the mixture in a shallow pan and refrigerate at least three hours, or overnight, until it is firm and cuttable. Warm mixture will burst in the fat.
- Double breading"Repeating the operation twice" most likely means egg and crumb, then egg and crumb again, though it can also be read as two further coats. Chill the coated croquettes another half hour before frying so the shell sets.
- Frying temperatureThe recipe gives no temperature; "boiling fat" for a fry basket corresponds to roughly 375F in modern terms. Lower and the crumb soaks; hotter and the outside colours before the centre warms. Two to three minutes is plenty since everything inside is already cooked.
- SourcingAmerican shad stocks have fallen sharply and several Atlantic river fisheries have been closed to commercial netting, so roe is a short seasonal item in early spring rather than a staple. Buy it fresh and use it the same day; it spoils quickly.
- YieldOne pair of roe with a pint of cream base gives roughly ten to twelve croquettes, enough for four to six as a first course.
Shad roe was one of the reliable markers of spring on nineteenth-century American tables, especially along the Hudson, the Delaware and the Chesapeake, where the shad run brought fish and roe to market in enormous quantities for a few weeks each year. The Waldorf treated it the way fashionable hotel cooking treated most prized ingredients of the period: cooked, bound with a rich starch-and-cream panada, breaded, and deep fried into croquettes. The croquette itself was a French borrowing that American hotel and club kitchens adopted wholesale in the late 1800s, partly because it turned any single expensive ingredient into a number of neat identical portions, and partly because a fry basket and a kettle of fat were standing equipment in a large kitchen. That the shad run is now a diminished thing, and the roe a brief specialty rather than a seasonal glut, is the sharpest difference between this page and the market it was written for.