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Shad-Roe Salad
When the shad roe is not needed for the fish dinner. a salad can be made of it for the next day's luncheon. It spoils quickly, so should be cooked promptly. If not baked with the fish, put the roe in slightly salted boiling water and simmer gently for about fifteen minutes. Drain and wipe dry.
Dip in beaten egg, roll in fine white bread-crumbs, and brown lightly in a little butter. While still warm pour over it two tablespoonfuls lemon-juice and season with salt and a little paprika. Set away to chill. When ready to serve cut it in suitable-sized pieces and mix with it an equal quantity of very crisp cucumber cubes. Cover with a mayonnaise dressing (see page 74) and decorate the top with capers and chopped olives.
Serve on crisp lettuce-leaves. This salad should be prepared just before serving.
A straightforward cold salad built on poached, crumbed shad roe. The technique is sound; most of what needs saying concerns sourcing the roe, handling its membrane, and the mayonnaise.
- The hinge: keep the water at a bare shiverA shad roe sac is a thin membrane under pressure, and a rolling boil will split it and scatter the eggs. Hold the water at 175-180F, barely trembling, and prick the sac two or three times with a needle first so steam can escape.
- Fifteen minutes is right hereA pair of shad roe lobes needs 10-15 minutes of gentle poaching to firm through; undercooked roe is unpleasantly pasty in the centre.
- Sourcing shad roeAmerican shad roe is a spring product, roughly March to May, sold in paired lobes at fish counters on the Atlantic seaboard and by mail order. Atlantic shad stocks are much reduced from their historic abundance and several rivers are closed to the fishery, so buy from a supplier who can say where it came from.
- Handling the leftoverThe book is right that roe spoils fast. Cook it the day it is bought, chill it uncovered until cold and then wrap it, and use it within twenty-four hours. Roe that smells of anything beyond clean fish should be thrown out.
- "Brown lightly in a little butter"Shallow-fry in clarified butter or a butter-and-oil mix over medium heat, about two minutes a side. Whole butter over higher heat will burn before the crumbs colour.
- The mayonnaiseThe dressing on page 74 will almost certainly be a hand-made mayonnaise built on raw yolk, as was standard. Use pasteurised eggs, or a good commercial mayonnaise thinned with a little lemon juice, if you are serving anyone elderly, pregnant or immunocompromised.
- Seasoning while warmThe two tablespoonfuls of lemon juice go on while the roe is still warm rather than after chilling; warm crumbs take up the acid more readily. Do this off the heat, then chill.
- YieldOne pair of roe with an equal volume of cucumber should dress about four small luncheon salads, or two as a main course, though the recipe states no yield.
Shad roe was one of the fixed markers of the American spring, and it was cheap enough to turn up in a book about using things twice. American shad (Alosa sapidissima) run up the Atlantic rivers to spawn from late winter into May, and the Delaware, Hudson and Chesapeake fisheries supplied Eastern cities in such quantity that shad and its roe appeared on hotel menus, in chophouses and at family dinners for weeks on end. The assumption behind this entry -- that a household would bake a whole shad, find itself with roe left over, and want it turned into a luncheon salad the next day -- says a good deal about how abundant the fish then was. Stocks fell sharply through the twentieth century from damming, pollution and overfishing, and roe is now a seasonal specialty priced accordingly. The salad itself is of its moment: chilled crumbed protein, cucumber, mayonnaise, capers and olives on lettuce is often said to have been the standard grammar of the American luncheon salad of the period.