Home › The World's Kitchen › Shad Roes, Maryland
Shad Roes, Maryland
Procure two fresh shad roes about one to one and a half pounds each. Place them in a lightly buttered frying pan with two tablespoons each white wine and sherry, half ounce good butter, and season with half teaspoon salt, one saltspoon each cayenne and grated nutmeg. Cover the fish with a lightly buttered paper. Place on the fire for five minutes, then set in the oven for thirty-five minutes. Remove, lift up the paper, carefully arrange the roes without breaking on a large dish, place the pan on the fire and add one and a half gills good cream; season with a saltspoon salt and half saltspoon cayenne and let boil for five minutes; dilute two egg yolks with two tablespoons cream and add to the pan, constantly mixing with a whisk while heating for three minutes, but not allowing to boil. Remove, strain the sauce through a cheesecloth over the roes and serve.
A straightforward braise finished with a cream-and-yolk liaison. Two things need attention: the cooking time, which belongs to a much larger piece of fish, and the sauce, which will curdle the moment it simmers.
- The timing is the problemFive minutes on the stove plus thirty-five in the oven will leave shad roe dry and chalky. A pair of lobes weighing a pound or more needs roughly 12-18 minutes total in a covered pan over gentle heat, until firm at the center and no longer red; smaller sets are done in under 10.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; the recipe says only to 'set in the oven'. A moderate oven, in the region of 350F, is a reasonable reading, and the covered pan is best treated as a gentle braise rather than a roast.
- Saltspoon and gillA saltspoon is about 1/4 teaspoon. A gill is half a cup, so one and a half gills of cream is 3/4 cup. Half an ounce of butter is a tablespoon.
- Prick the membraneEach lobe is a sac under pressure. Pierce it in two or three places with a needle or the tip of a knife before it goes in the pan, or it may split and shed eggs into the sauce. The recipe's own instruction to arrange the roes 'without breaking' is a reminder that they are fragile to handle.
- Buttered paperA cartouche of buttered parchment cut to the pan's diameter does the same job, holding steam against the roe without pressing on it. Foil works but conducts heat harder at the edges.
- The liaison must not boilOnce the diluted yolks go in, keep the pan below a simmer, around 175-180F, whisking constantly. At a boil the yolks scramble and the sauce breaks; the three minutes given is enough to thicken it lightly.
- StrainingPushing the sauce through cheesecloth catches any stray eggs and any yolk that has tightened. A fine sieve is easier and does the same work.
- YieldTwo sets of roe serve four as a first course, or two generously as a main with toast. Bacon and lemon are common accompaniments.
Shad roe is a spring dish, tied to the run of American shad up the Atlantic rivers, and the Chesapeake fishery is generally taken to be why Maryland's name attached to so many nineteenth-century preparations of it. The roe was prized well above the flesh, which is famously bony, and it appeared on hotel and club menus in Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York during the few weeks it was available. The cream-and-yolk finish here is straight French practice grafted onto an American regional ingredient, which is characteristic of the grand-hotel cooking these international collections drew on. Shad stocks have fallen sharply since, and directed harvest is closed in the Chesapeake and several other waters, so roe sold today is likely to come from managed fisheries elsewhere on the coast; it is worth asking where yours originated.