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baked shad
(from Housekeeping in Old Virginia, by Marion Cabell Tyree, 1878)

Ingredients:

shad fish​
cayenne pepper​
stuffing:​
bread​
seasoned with pepper​
salt​
thyme, or parsley​
celery-seed​
onion​
butter​
1 pint water​
butter​
flour​

Instructions:

Open the shad down the back, wash well and salt it ; wipe dry and rub inside and out with a little cayenne pepper. Prepare a stuffing of bread, seasoned with pepper, salt, thyme, or parsley, celery-seed, a little chopped onion, piece of butter, size of a walnut.​
Tie up the fish and put in a baking pan with one pint water (to a good sized fish) and butter, size of a hen's egg. Sprinkle with flour, baste well and bake slowly an hour and a half.​


A recipe to make Gen. Pickett proud! :smile:
 
Last edited by a moderator:
He is a recipe from:Directions for Cookery.in it's Various Branches (1840)
Author is Eliza Leslie
Keep on the head and fins,Make a force-meat or stuffing of grated bread crumbs,cold boiled ham or bacon minced fine,sweet marjoram,pepper,salt and a little powdered mace or cloves.Moisten it with yolk of beaten egg.Stuff the inside of the fish with it,reserving a little to rub over the outside,having first rubbed all over the fish with yolk of egg.Lay 5he fish in a deep pan,add a little water,a Jill of port wine,and a piece of butter rolled in flour.Bake it well and when it's done,send it to the table with the gravy poured over it.Garnish with slices of lemon.
Any fish may be baked in this same manner.
A large fish of 10 or 12 pounds weight will require about 2 hours baking.
 
Shad can, and are caught on hook and line using what are called 'shad darts'. Though they apparently do not feed on their spawning runs, for some strange reason they will go after these brightly colored small lures, usually with gold colored hooks. They are highly prized as game fish, sometimes referred to as a poor man's salmon, and can be tough to land as it is easy to rip the lure out of their tender mouths before landing. Lambertville, NJ has a big shad festival on the Delaware just upstream of where Washington crossed the Delaware and, as I mentioned in another post recently, their arrival in the Schuylkill at Valley Forge in April, 1778 was important for the Continentals coming off a hard winter. There is also a 'shad bush', so called because it comes to leaf at about the same time, early April that the shad begin their run. There are many early photographs showing the preparation of 'planked shad' . The fish, usually weighing about five pounds or so, were split into two flat halves, nailed to flat planks and laid upright next to a fire. This not only created wood fire taste but made it easy to separate the flesh from the many small bones which make the fish somewhat more difficult to eat than other fish. I have never seen shad offered at a fish market and the only ones I have eaten were the ones I caught. Unfortunately by the mid 20th Century their numbers were greatly depleted as many of the traditional spawning rivers were too polluted for them and a number these rivers (like the Schuylkill and the Susquehanna) were dammed preventing an upstream run. I think the recent building of fish ladders may have rectified this and much of the industrial pollution is gone as the industries along the rivers have gone. By the way, in those same streams, and in smaller ones, the shad are preceded by alewife herring, their smaller cousins. I am not certain about the shad runs in New England or south of the Delaware but I understand they can be found as far south as the Saint Johns River in Florida, though I don't know if there is any fishing for them in the deep South. I guess competing with fried catfish could be a tough sell.
 
Shad can, and are caught on hook and line using what are called 'shad darts'. Though they apparently do not feed on their spawning runs, for some strange reason they will go after these brightly colored small lures, usually with gold colored hooks. They are highly prized as game fish, sometimes referred to as a poor man's salmon, and can be tough to land as it is easy to rip the lure out of their tender mouths before landing. Lambertville, NJ has a big shad festival on the Delaware just upstream of where Washington crossed the Delaware and, as I mentioned in another post recently, their arrival in the Schuylkill at Valley Forge in April, 1778 was important for the Continentals coming off a hard winter. There is also a 'shad bush', so called because it comes to leaf at about the same time, early April that the shad begin their run. There are many early photographs showing the preparation of 'planked shad' . The fish, usually weighing about five pounds or so, were split into two flat halves, nailed to flat planks and laid upright next to a fire. This not only created wood fire taste but made it easy to separate the flesh from the many small bones which make the fish somewhat more difficult to eat than other fish. I have never seen shad offered at a fish market and the only ones I have eaten were the ones I caught. Unfortunately by the mid 20th Century their numbers were greatly depleted as many of the traditional spawning rivers were too polluted for them and a number these rivers (like the Schuylkill and the Susquehanna) were dammed preventing an upstream run. I think the recent building of fish ladders may have rectified this and much of the industrial pollution is gone as the industries along the rivers have gone. By the way, in those same streams, and in smaller ones, the shad are preceded by alewife herring, their smaller cousins. I am not certain about the shad runs in New England or south of the Delaware but I understand they can be found as far south as the Saint Johns River in Florida, though I don't know if there is any fishing for them in the deep South. I guess competing with fried catfish could be a tough sell.
There is a Shad run on the St.Johns river in Florida.it occurs in the winter from Jan.thru Mar.
 
Been checking out some fish recipes. Found this old recipe from Kentucky for "Fried Shad".

Cut the fish in pieces, rinse and wipe dry; rub a little salt over the fish, and when it has melted, roll them in flour; heat the fat from salt pork, or oiled butter, nearly boiling hot; lay in the fish, the skin side up, fry until brown, and then turn the fish; cook slowly without burning. Serve plain or with horseradish.

From: "Old Time Recipes To Enjoy, The Kentucky Explorer", July/August, 2018.
 
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