Home › Fish, Oysters, Etc › Fried Soles, with Shrimp Sauce
Fried Soles, with Shrimp Sauce
Clean the soles thoroughly, pull off the brown skin, cut off the head, and with a pair of large scissors trim away the fins close up to the fillets; then wash and wipe the soles dry and roll in little flour; dip them first into beaten egg, and then into fine bread crumbs; place the fish on a dish in a cool place until within twenty minutes of dinner time; then fry them in hot fat; when done, drain them on a napkin, and dish them up with some fried parsley. Serve with a sauce boat full of shrimp or anchovy sauce.
A straightforward egg-and-crumb fry, but it assumes a whole flatfish and a cook who knows how to dress one. A few points bridge the gap.
- The fishTrue Dover sole is expensive and often unavailable; petrale, lemon sole, dab, flounder or plaice all behave the same way. Two soles of 12-14 oz each, or four fillets, serve two people.
- SkinningThe dark skin comes off in one piece if you nick it at the tail, get a grip with a cloth or salted fingers, and pull firmly toward the head. The white underskin is usually left on for a whole fish. Fishmongers will do all of this on request.
- "Roll in little flour"Meaning a bare dusting, patted off, not a coating. Its only job is to give the egg something to cling to; excess flour turns gummy under the crumbs.
- The cool restHolding the crumbed fish in a cool place helps set the coating so it is less likely to slide off in the pan. Note that the original's "twenty minutes" marks when frying should begin, not the length of the chill.
- Frying fat and temperature"Hot fat" here means deep or generous shallow fat at about 350-360F. Fillets need 2-3 minutes a side, a whole sole 4-5 minutes a side; the flesh should lift from the backbone cleanly and read 145F. Overcooked sole turns cottony fast.
- Fried parsleyDry parsley sprigs thoroughly, then drop into the same fat for 10-15 seconds until they stop sputtering and turn brilliant green. Wet parsley will spit violently.
- Shrimp saucePeriod versions were built on melted butter or a white/bechamel sauce, finished with butter, a little cayenne or anchovy essence, and small peeled shrimp warmed through at the end. Add the shrimp off the boil; a simmer makes them tough.
- DrainingA folded paper towel does the work of the napkin. Keep the fish in a single layer and uncovered so the crust does not steam soft.
Fried sole with shrimp sauce was a fixture of Victorian and Edwardian dinner service on both sides of the Atlantic. Sole was prized for firm, sweet flesh that holds its shape through frying, and the egg-and-crumb treatment — a l'anglaise in professional kitchens — was a standard way to give a lean white fish a crisp surface. The paired sauce is also of its period: shrimp butter and anchovy essence gave cooks a concentrated marine savor, and the sauce went to table separately in a boat rather than over the fish. Fried parsley, now rare as a garnish, was then a conventional finish for food fried in deep fat.