No. 1253

Shad, Brussels Style

Alose a la Bruxelloise

Raise the fillets from a shad and remove the skin, then lay the fish on a buttered dish. Mix with two ounces of fresh butter, one ounce of finely chopped fresh mushrooms, pepper, salt, nutmeg, lemon juice and a clove of crushed garlic; cover the fish with this preparation, dredge over bread-crumbs and grated parmesan and pour over a little melted butter. Cook the shad in a hot oven and when done, press over the juice of a lemon; besprinkle with chopped parsley, and cover with a rather light brown sauce (No. 414) made with white wine.

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For the Modern Kitchen

A straightforward gratin of shad fillet under a compound butter, crumbs and cheese. The whole thing lives or dies on timing: shad is a thin, oily fillet that overcooks in a minute or two past done.

"A hot oven"Conventionally read as somewhere in the 400-450F range; the book gives no figure. At that heat, skinned shad fillets on a buttered dish need about 10-14 minutes depending on thickness; pull them when the flesh just parts and is still glossy at the centre.
Quantities and yieldTwo ounces of butter and one ounce of mushrooms is enough coating for the two fillets of one shad, which serves two to three. A whole shad runs 3-5 lb and yields perhaps a pound and a half of boneless fillet.
The bonesShad carries rows of fine floating intramuscular bones that a plain filleting knife will not remove. Either buy the fillets pre-boned from a fishmonger who knows the cut, or accept that diners will be picking bones out of a sauced gratin.
Sauce No. 414That is Ranhofer's brown sauce built on espagnole, here finished with white wine. A modern substitute is a well-reduced veal or chicken demi-glace deglazed with dry white wine and mounted with butter; keep it thin enough to coat, since the fish already carries butter and crumbs.
The mushroom butterChop the mushrooms very fine and work them raw into softened butter with the seasonings. Do not saute them first — the point is that they release their moisture into the butter as the fish cooks, basting it from above.
Crumbs and parmesanUse dry fine crumbs, not fresh, or they will go soggy under the butter. A light dredge only: a heavy crust will still be pale when the fish is done, and finishing under the broiler for thirty seconds is safer than leaving the fish in longer.
Sourcing shadAmerican shad runs are much reduced and several Atlantic states have closed or restricted the fishery, so fresh shad is a spring-only, region-specific purchase. Bluefish, mackerel or a thick fillet of Spanish mackerel take this treatment well.
GarlicOne crushed clove in two ounces of butter reads as very restrained now, in keeping with a nineteenth-century French kitchen that generally used garlic as a background note rather than a flavour in its own right.

A Little History

Shad occupied a place in nineteenth-century American cooking that is hard to imagine now: the spring runs up the Hudson, Delaware and Connecticut rivers brought in fish by the wagonload, cheap enough for shad planked over open fires at riverside outings and fine enough for Delmonico's, where Charles Ranhofer was chef when he compiled The Epicurean (1894). His answer to a glut of a local fish was to run it through the whole French repertoire, which is why this section carries shad done in the manner of several different places. A la bruxelloise in classical usage usually points to a garnish of Brussels sprouts, chicory or braised endive; here the name attaches instead to the gratin treatment with butter, mushrooms and cheese, a reminder that these regional labels were loose commercial shorthand rather than fixed formulas. The bones were the standing complaint then as now, and long baking was among the period's remedies, aimed at softening them enough to be tolerable.