To Pickle Shad Ok Pike
Ingredients
Directions
Prepare
Clean the fish thoroughly.
Mix brown sugar, coarse sea salt, common salt, and saltpetre to create the pickle.
Pack the keg
Place a layer of the mixture at the bottom of a keg.
Add a layer of fish with the skin-side down.
Repeat layers until the keg is full, finishing with the salt mixture on top.
Place a heavy weight on top to keep the fish submerged in the brine.
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.
Explore the science
What each ingredient does
- Shad
- The main fish, which is cured in the salt mixture rather than cooked.
- Coarse sea salt
- Draws moisture out of the fish and forms the bulk of the cure.
- Common salt
- Adds to the salting action, drawing water from the fish and firming its flesh.
- Brown sugar
- Adds sweetness and balances the harshness of the salt.
- Saltpetre
- Helps preserve the fish and keeps its colour during curing.
The step that matters
Keeping the fish submerged. Fish left above the brine can spoil at the surface. A heavy weight keeps every layer under the liquid, so the cure reaches the whole batch evenly.
“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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