Planked Shad
Clean fish and place skin side down on an oak plank. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, brush over with butter and lemon juice, and bake twenty-five minutes in a hot oven by placing the plank on the bottom of the oven. Serve on the plank, garnished with radishes, parsley and a border of potato roses.
A short, confident recipe that assumes a cook who knows what shad looks like and owns an oak plank. Two things carry it: real bottom heat, and a plank that will not scorch.
- "A hot oven"Period cookbooks generally reckon a hot oven at somewhere around 400-450F, though this book gives no figure. The plank is set directly on the oven floor so the underside of the fish is heated through the wood while the top roasts; in a modern oven with a hidden bottom element, use the lowest rack instead and preheat fully.
- The plankUntreated oak only, at least three-quarters of an inch thick, never plywood or anything glued, sealed or pressure-treated. Soak it an hour, rub it with oil and heat it in the oven before the fish goes on. A thin or dry plank will char and smoke at this temperature.
- TimingTwenty-five minutes suits a split shad of about 3 lb laid flat. A larger fish needs longer; go by an internal temperature of 145F at the thickest point, or flesh that parts cleanly from the backbone.
- BoningShad is famously full of fine floating bones that no amount of cooking dissolves. Buy it boned by the fishmonger if you can, or serve it in the classic way -- lifted off the frame in strips and eaten with attention.
- SourcingAmerican shad runs collapsed through the twentieth century and several Atlantic states have closed or restricted the fishery. Pacific-caught shad and hickory shad appear seasonally in spring; bluefish, mackerel or salmon plank the same way.
- Potato rosesDuchesse potato -- riced potato bound with egg yolk and butter -- piped in rosettes around the plank and browned. Pipe them onto the hot plank for the last ten minutes so they colour without drying out.
- The roeIf the fish comes with roe, it was the prized part in this period. It is usually gently sautéed in butter separately rather than planked, as it firms and splits under direct high heat.
- YieldA 3 lb shad, planked and served with the potatoes, feeds four.
Shad, Alosa sapidissima -- the species name means "most savory" -- ran up the rivers of the Atlantic seaboard in enormous spring numbers, and for two centuries it was one of the cheapest fish in eastern American markets. Planking is generally traced to riverside cooking along the Delaware, Susquehanna and Potomac, where the fish was nailed to a board and set upright before an open fire; the oven version in books like this one is the parlour translation, keeping the oak flavour and the theatrical serving on the board itself. The garnish of radishes, parsley and piped potato marks it as a company dish rather than a shad-bake supper. By the time this book appeared, the annual runs were already thinning under dams and pollution, and the fish that once fed cities is now a seasonal rarity in most of its old rivers.