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Broiled Shad, Anchovy Butter
Procure half a very fresh shad of about three pounds. Scale, trim off the bones, neatly wipe. Mix on a plate a tablespoon oil and half teaspoon each salt and pepper; repeatedly roll the shad in the seasoning, arrange on the broiler and broil for six minutes on each side, remove, dress on a hot dish, spread an anchovy butter over the fish, decorate with six quarters lemon and parsley greens and serve.
A one-paragraph broil that assumes you already know how to make anchovy butter and how to bone a shad. Both are worth spelling out.
- What "half a shad" meansThe instruction reads as a single fillet side taken from a fish of about three pounds, not half of a three-pound fillet. That gives roughly 3/4 to 1 lb of boneless meat, which serves two as a main course. The six lemon quarters suggest the author had a larger table in mind; scale up by whole fillets.
- The bones are the whole problemShad carries rows of fine floating intermuscular bones that do not lift out with the frame. "Trim off the bones" is doing enormous work here — proper shad boning is a specialist knife job. Buy it pre-boned from the fishmonger, or accept that you will be picking bones at the table.
- Anchovy butter, since none is givenStandard compound: mash 4-6 oil-packed anchovy fillets (or 2 tsp anchovy paste) into 4 oz softened unsalted butter with a squeeze of lemon and a grind of pepper. Chill it firm, then lay slices on the hot fish so it melts at the table. Do not add salt — the anchovies and the seasoning oil already carry it.
- Broiler heat and distancePeriod broiling meant fierce, close, direct heat. Preheat a modern broiler on high and set the rack about 4 inches from the element; less than that and the oiled skin scorches before the flesh sets.
- Six minutes a side is too longThat timing suits a thick whole fish. A boned side about 3/4 inch at the thickest wants 4-5 minutes skin-side down and often no turn at all — shad is oily and cooks fast. Pull it when the flesh just parts at the thick end; carryover finishes it.
- Turning a filletIf you do turn it, use two spatulas or broil on a lightly oiled rack over a sheet pan. Shad flesh is soft and layered and will break apart on a single flip with tongs.
- SourcingAmerican shad runs are much reduced from their nineteenth-century abundance and several Atlantic fisheries are closed or tightly restricted; availability varies by state and season. Bluefish, mackerel or Spanish mackerel take the same oil-salt-pepper broil and the same anchovy butter.
- The roeIf you buy a roe shad in spring, the paired roe sacs are the prize and are usually sold separately. They are not broiled with the fillet — they need gentle cooking in butter, and they burst if rushed over high heat.
Shad was once the great democratic fish of the American Atlantic seaboard, running up the Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna and Connecticut in such numbers each spring that it was cheap enough to be considered poor men's food, and planked shad was long associated with the tidal rivers, though the formal shad-planking supper as an institution belongs to a later period. By the time this book was compiled, the fish had been rehabilitated into hotel dining rooms, where its richness suited the French treatment given here: a plain broil dressed with a compound butter, garnished with lemon and parsley in the standard restaurant manner. Anchovy butter belongs to the family of beurres composés codified in nineteenth-century French professional cooking — butters of this kind were served with broiled fish generally, and an anchovy-salted one was often said to suit an oily fish, the salt and umami cutting the fat where a lean fish would have received something milder. The brevity of "trim off the bones" is a good measure of who the book was written for: a cook expected to know the shad's notorious bone structure without being told.