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Baked Shad, Madrid
Procure half a fine, fresh two-and-a-half-pound shad. Scale, remove the backbone and neatly wipe. Season with a teaspoon salt, half teaspoon white pepper, well rubbed in all over. Lightly oil the bottom of a roasting tin; place the fish in the tin, spread a tablespoon oil over the fish, then place in the oven to bake for ten minutes. Draw the pan to the oven door;. Slice three fine, ripe tomatoes, carefully place the slices on top of the fish. Finely mix four sound shallots with a small green pepper and sprinkle over the tomatoes. Season the top with a half teaspoon salt and saltspoon Spanish saffron, well distributed, reset the pan in the hot oven and bake for fifteen minutes longer. Remove, lift up the fish with a skimmer, Dress on a hot dish, pour the gravy over and serve.
A straightforward oven-roasted fish with a Spanish-inflected topping. Most of the work is in sourcing the shad and reading the vague oven directions correctly.
- "Half a shad"This means one side of a filleted fish, well under a pound of meat with the skin on once the frame is out. Ask for a boned shad fillet; the backbone is only the beginning of the problem, since shad carries several rows of fine intramuscular bones that require a practised hand to remove.
- Sourcing the fishAmerican shad runs are much reduced from what they were in 1906, and commercial harvest is closed or restricted in a number of Atlantic states. Buy from a licensed fishmonger, and if none is available a bluefish, mackerel or Spanish mackerel fillet behaves similarly under the same treatment.
- Oven temperatureThe recipe says only "hot oven," which in period usage covers roughly 400-450F. At that heat, ten minutes plus fifteen is about right for a fillet of this size; modern food guidance gives fish as done at 145F at the thickest part, though many cooks pull it at 135-140F.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon. That is a great deal of saffron for one fillet — a generous pinch, crumbled between the fingers, gives colour and perfume without turning medicinal.
- Total seasoningA teaspoon of salt rubbed into the fillet plus another half teaspoon on the topping is heavy-handed for a pound of fish. Half that, split the same way, suits modern palates and modern salt.
- ShallotsNineteenth- and early twentieth-century American cookbooks often use "shallot" loosely for green onions. Either works here; four true shallots, finely chopped, are assertive but not out of place with saffron and tomato.
- Tomato and moistureSliced ripe tomatoes shed a good deal of liquid, which is the "gravy" the recipe pours over at the end. Use a shallow tin so it reduces rather than poaching the fish, and salt the tomatoes only after they are on top.
- ServingOne fillet serves two as a main course. Lift it with a wide fish slice rather than the skimmer — the flesh is soft and the topping slides off easily.
The International Cook Book belongs to a wave of turn-of-the-century American volumes that catalogued dishes by nationality, and its "Madrid" tag here is doing familiar shorthand work: tomato, sweet pepper, onion and saffron were the four markers that signalled Spain to an English-speaking reader of the period, whether or not any Madrid kitchen would have recognised the dish. Shad, meanwhile, was thoroughly American and thoroughly ordinary the spring runs up the Delaware, Hudson and Connecticut rivers were so abundant through the nineteenth century that shad was cheap food, and cookbooks worked hard to dress it up. Planked shad, broiled shad and shad roe all appear across the period literature. The fish's notorious bone structure gave rise to a small tradition of specialist boners, best attested in the Connecticut River towns, a skill generally described as passed down within families. Stocks fell sharply over the twentieth century through damming, pollution and overfishing, which is why a dish that once read as everyday now requires some hunting.