To Boil a Shad
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare and poach
Get a nice fat shad, fresh from the water, ensuring the skin will not crack when boiled. Put it in cold water in a kettle of proper length, with a wine.
Add 59 glass of pale vinegar, salt, a little garlic, and a bundle of parsley.
When it is done, drain all the water from the fish, lay it in the dish, and garnish with scraped horse-radish.
Serve
Have a sauce boat of nice melted butter, to mix with the different catsups, as taste shall direct.
Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures. See the original page.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Shad (in the method)
- Forms the main body of the dish, cooked gently in the poaching liquid until its flesh is tender.
- Vinegar
- Adds acidity to the poaching liquid, giving the fish a sharp, bright flavour.
- Butter (in the method)
- Melted and served as a rich fat to mix with the catsups and enrich each bite.
The step that matters
Start the fish in cold water and keep the boil gentle. Bringing the fish up to temperature slowly in cold water helps the skin stay intact. A hard, rapid boil can split the skin and break the delicate flesh.
“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.
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