No. 1255

Planked Shad, Ravigote Butter

Alose a la Planche, au Beurre Ravigote

Procure a very dry cherrywood plank, three-quarters of an inch thick, fourteen inches long, and ten inches wide; it should be beveled on the bottom edge with two crosspieces of wood which should be screwed on underneath. Open the shad by splitting it down the back, remove the spinal bone and season with salt; cut off the head and thin tail part, and fasten the shad on the plank; set it in front of the fire to cook, or better still underneath a gas salamander (Fig. 123.) When the fish is done--which will be in about thirty minutes--lay both the plank and shad on a dish, and cover the top of the fish with ravigote butter (No. 583); servo it immediately.

← No. 1254 Shad, Irish Style, Garnished with Shad Roe C Shad, Herring & Mackerel No. 1256 Shad, with Sorrel Puree and Sorrel Leaves →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's planked shad is a vertical-broiling technique: the fish is nailed or clamped to a board and cooked by radiant heat while the wood catches the fat and perfumes the flesh. Almost everything that needs translating is equipment and fish supply.

The salamander is your broilerA gas salamander was an overhead radiant burner. Set the plank on a rack about 6 inches under a preheated broiler, or lean it before a wood fire as the recipe's first option allows. The plank goes under the heat, not into an oven.
Thirty minutes is for an open fireA butterflied shad fillet under a modern broiler is done in 10 to 15 minutes, when the flesh flakes and reads about 145F. The half-hour figure assumes the gentler, less consistent heat of a hearth or an old salamander.
The plank itselfThe plank -- Untreated, well-dried cherry (the wood Ranhofer names) three-quarters of an inch thick, with no glue, varnish or finish of any kind; oak also works. The recipe does not say what the two screwed-on crosspieces are for, but they would raise the board and stop it rocking. Season the board with oil before first use and expect it to char at the edges.
Fastening the fishThe recipe says only to 'fasten the shad on the plank'; nails or tacks through the skin at the edges is the likeliest reading. Stainless steel skewers pushed through skin and into the board, or a few brads, do the same job; the fish must lie flat and skin-side down against the wood.
Sourcing shadAmerican shad stocks have collapsed across much of their range and directed fishing is closed or tightly restricted in many Atlantic states. Buy only from a legitimate market in season, roughly March to May. Bluefish, mackerel or a whole boned trout plank well as substitutes.
The bonesRemoving the spinal bone does not remove the intramuscular Y-bones that make shad notorious. Have a fishmonger bone it properly, or accept that eating around them is part of the dish.
Ravigote butterRanhofer's No. 583 is a compound butter: green herbs blanched, squeezed dry, pounded smooth and worked into softened butter with seasoning. Make it ahead, chill it, and slice it over the hot fish so it melts at the table.
ServingA shad of 3 to 4 lb serves four. The plank is meant to go to the table as the platter, set on a larger dish to protect the cloth.

A Little History

Planking is one of the few American cooking techniques Charles Ranhofer records more or less straight, without a French pedigree grafted on: cooking a split fish nailed to a hardwood board before an open fire is generally traced to Native practice along the Atlantic seaboard, and it survived as a shore-dinner method; the well-known Virginia shad-planking political gatherings are a twentieth-century development. Shad ran up the Hudson and Delaware and into the Chesapeake in enormous spring numbers and were cheap enough to be called a poor man's fish, which is exactly why a Delmonico's chef needed to dress the result -- hence the ravigote butter, a green herb butter from the French repertoire spread over a fish cooked on a plank. The Epicurean (1894) carries a whole section of shad entries, the run being a fixed point in the New York culinary calendar; the fish now appears rarely, its stocks depleted by dams, pollution and a century of overfishing.