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Shad, Maitre D'Hotel
Procure from your fish dealer a small, fresh roe shad or half one of two pounds, clean and wipe well, pare and cut in two (if a whole one), scale it and remove the backbone. Season both sides with one teaspoon salt and a very little white pepper, nicely rubbed in. Roll it well in a tablespoon oil. Arrange in a double wire broiler and broil on a moderate fire for eight minutes on the split side and for four minutes on the skin side. Remove, dress on a hot dish, spread a maitre d'hotel butter over and serve with a few parsley greens around the dish and six quarters of lemon.
A plain broiled shad from the Delmonico tradition, where the whole point is timing and the compound butter. Two things the original assumes you already know: how to make maitre d'hotel butter, and how to deal with shad's notorious bones.
- Maitre d'hotel butterNot given here because every cook of the period knew it: soften 4 tablespoons butter and work in a tablespoon of chopped parsley, a good squeeze of lemon, salt and white pepper. Chill it slightly and lay a slice on the hot fish so it melts at the table.
- The bonesShad has rows of floating intramuscular bones that no amount of removing the backbone will touch. A skilled fish dealer can bone them out; ask yours to do it, or accept that eating around them is part of the dish.
- "Pare and cut in two"He means split the fish lengthwise into two sides, not cut it crosswise. "Half one of two pounds" is ambiguous; it most likely means half of a two-pound fish, though it could be read as a half weighing two pounds.
- Moderate fireOn a charcoal grill, coals you can hold a hand over for four or five seconds. Under a domestic broiler, set the rack about 4 inches from the element on medium rather than full blast, or the oil will flare before the flesh sets.
- The double wire broilerA hinged wire basket that lets you flip a delicate fish without it falling apart. A hinged grill basket does the same job; failing that, broil the fish on an oiled sheet, flesh side up, and skip the turn entirely.
- TimingEight minutes flesh side, four minutes skin side suits a thick two-pound half. Thinner fillets will be done in half that. Shad is a rich, oily fish and goes dry quickly; pull it at 145F at the thickest point, or when the flesh just parts.
- The roeA roe shad is a female, and the roe sacs are the reason people paid extra for her. They will not broil in the same time as the fish. Cook them separately, gently, in butter until firm through, and serve alongside.
- SourcingAtlantic shad runs are much diminished and several states have closed or restricted the fishery. Buy from a dealer who can tell you where the fish came from; shad appears only briefly, in spring.
Alosa sapidissima, the American shad, carries "most savory" in its own scientific name, and for most of the nineteenth century its spring spawning run up the Delaware, Hudson and Connecticut rivers was a fixed point in the eastern calendar. Roe shad commanded the high price, the egg sacs being treated as a delicacy in their own right. Filippini, long of Delmonico's, gives it the standard restaurant treatment of his day: broiled plain over coals and finished with maitre d'hotel butter, the parsley-and-lemon compound butter that French kitchens used on nearly every grilled fish and steak and that took its name from the head of the dining room rather than any particular cook. The recipe's opening instruction to "procure from your fish dealer" is characteristic of the period's cookbooks, which assumed a household with a fishmonger who would scale, split and bone to order.