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Plain Broiled Shad Roes
Mix on a plate a tablespoon oil, a teaspoon salt and a half teaspoon white pepper; repeatedly roll in the seasoning two shad roes of about one pound each. Arrange them on a broiler and broil for eight minutes on each side, dress on a dish, pour a little melted butter over them, decorate with a little parsley greens, six quarters lemon and serve.
A Delmonico-style treatment that assumes a coal or gas grill-broiler and a cook who knows how delicate roe is. Two adjustments matter most: the membrane, and the heat.
- Prick the membrane firstEach roe set is enclosed in a thin sac that traps steam and bursts, spattering fat and scattering eggs. Pierce it in several places with a needle or the tip of a paring knife before it goes near heat. The original does not mention this step.
- "Broil" means a grill, not your oven drawerIn 1906 this was cooked on a hinged wire broiler over live coals or under a gas salamander. Under a modern overhead broiler, set the rack 4 to 5 inches from the element and expect to move the pan if the surface colors too fast.
- Eight minutes a side is for large roeSets weighing a full pound each are on the large side; shad roe sold today is often noticeably smaller. Smaller sets need roughly 4 to 5 minutes a side. Roe is done when it is firm, opaque and grayish-pink through the center, not still slack and red.
- Many cooks parboilParboiling is often recommended -- Poach the sets gently in salted water for a few minutes and pat them dry before broiling. It firms the sac, reduces bursting, and makes the timing more predictable than raw-to-the-flame broiling.
- White pepper is deliberateA half teaspoon of white pepper for two roe sets is assertive, and white pepper keeps black flecks off the pale surface. Black pepper works if that is what you have; the seasoning quantities here are generous, so salt to taste rather than by the spoonful.
- The oil is a coating, not a marinadeOne tablespoon rolled over the roe is just enough to keep it from welding to the bars. Do it on a plate, as written, so the eggs are handled as little as possible.
- YieldTwo pound-size sets serve four as a main course, or six as a first course.
- SourcingAmerican shad stocks have declined sharply and some fisheries are closed or restricted, so roe is a short, regional spring item rather than a staple. Ask the fishmonger what run it came from; frozen roe is common and broils acceptably if thoroughly thawed and dried.
Shad roe belongs to a brief spring window, when American shad (Alosa sapidissima) ran up the Atlantic rivers of the eastern United States to spawn and city markets from Baltimore to Boston filled with the fish and its paired egg sacs. The shad was abundant enough in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to be poor man's food, and prized enough by the late nineteenth that roe alone commanded restaurant prices, which is why a book of hotel and restaurant cookery calls this one "plain." The International Cook Book is generally attributed to Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and the recipe reads like a professional line cook's shorthand: season on the plate, eight minutes a side, butter, parsley, lemon, out.