To Plank Shad
There is no better method of cooking a delicate fish, such as shad or Spanish mackerel, white fish or lake shad, Chautauqua Muscallonge (very much the flavor of shad, and by many thought equal to shad), than that method known as planking. The plank itself is a matter of great importance. Not that it need be of one special sort of wood, for the choice lies between cedar, oak, ash and hickory, some authorities recommending one, some another. Months are not too long a time to give to this seasoning of the wood. Once brought to the proper state, however, it remains perfect for years and years. The fish are not only cooked upon the plank, but should be served upon it as well. Never wash the fish plank. Rub it with a dry cloth and sandpaper it, then dust it off with some powdered lemon rind. Soap and water would be disastrous if applied, for the mixtures of flavors would be far from good. For preparing a shad for planking, split it open, wipe it dry and if possible, remove the backbone. Now place the fish, skin side down, upon a white oak or hickory plank, and tack it down. Spread the fish with soft butter and season it with salt and pepper. It should cook in a hot oven or before a hot fire. With the gas broiler that cooks from above it is very easy to broil the fish, putting board and all under the blaze and leaving it there twenty-one minutes. If baked, seven minutes longer should be allowed. When it is done, add some bits of butter, a little more salt and a sprinkling of paprika, one tablespoonful of minced parsley, and two tablespoonfuls of white wine if desired. Place the plank on a large platter, remove the tacks and serve it from the plank, hiding the edges with a garnish of parsley or watercress or lemon. Sauce for planked shad: Mix two tablespoonfuls of melted butter with two tablespoonfuls of walnut catsup, garnish the fish slightly about where it would be divided, in carving, and pour the butter mixture over. The sauce and garnishing should be all ready, so there need be no delay, for the fish should be served very hot.
Planking is one of the few nineteenth-century techniques that survives essentially unchanged, but the timing here belongs to a much cooler oven than yours and several of the ingredients have quietly left the market.
- The plank comes firstUse untreated, unfinished hardwood at least three-quarters of an inch thick — oak, hickory, ash or cedar — with no glue, plywood laminate or mineral oil finish. A thin board will warp and split under a broiler; a laminated one will off-gas adhesive into the fish.
- Seasoning and cleaningThe instruction never to wash the plank with soap is sound as far as flavor goes, but a board that has held raw fish needs more than sandpaper. Scrape it clean, wipe it with hot water and dry it thoroughly before storing, and accept that the wood will darken with use.
- Real oven heatThe recipe says only "a hot oven" and gives no temperature; in period cookery that usually means somewhere around 400-450F. Under a broiler, set the rack so the fish sits 4-6 inches from the element.
- Cut the time down hardCut the time down -- Twenty-one minutes under a modern broiler risks overcooking a butterflied shad. A split fish is often only about an inch at its thickest; check it early, from around 8-12 minutes under the broiler or 12-15 minutes in a hot oven, and stop when the flesh is just opaque and flakes at the thickest point.
- Tacking the fishUse plain steel or copper tacks, not galvanized or coated ones, driven through the skin at the edges only. Tacks can also be dispensed with, laying the fish skin-side down on the board instead.
- Shad and its substitutesAmerican shad is a seasonal spring fish, boned by specialists, and stocks are managed or closed in some rivers — buy what your fishmonger can legally supply. Spanish mackerel, bluefish or arctic char all plank well. Muskellunge is a game fish and is not sold commercially.
- Walnut catsupA Victorian condiment of green walnuts, vinegar, anchovy and spice, dark and salty rather than sweet. Mushroom ketchup is the closest survivor; a teaspoon of Worcestershire loosened with a little of the fish's pan butter gets you to the same place.
- YieldA 3–4 lb split shad serves four as a main course, and the plank itself should be large enough to leave a clear margin of wood all round the fish.
Planking is an American technique often traced to Native fishing practice along the Atlantic coast and the Great Lakes, where split fish were said to be fixed to a board or stake and set slanting toward an open fire — a method colonists are traditionally held to have adopted and then carried indoors to the range and, by the time this book was printed, to the gas broiler. Shad was the classic subject: an oily, extraordinarily bony river herring that ran up the Delaware, Hudson and Connecticut in spring in numbers hard to imagine now, cheap enough to be a working household's fish and prized enough to justify a dedicated board. The passing reference to a gas broiler "that cooks from above" dates the page neatly, as does the assumption that a cook would season a plank over months and keep it for years; the same assumption explains the fussing over lemon rind and the ban on soap, since an untreated hardwood board absorbs whatever touches it. Walnut catsup, the sauce here, was a standard bottled English condiment through the nineteenth century.