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SOLE (a la Maitre d'Hotel)
Have two or three soles filleted; stew the heads and bones in about half a pint of water, place the fillets of the soles in a flat pan in about a wine-glassful of this water, simmer two and a half minutes each side; turn the remainder of the water into sauce, by putting to it two ounces of butter, a little cayenne and salt and chopped parsley, thickening with arrowroot; add a tea-spoonful of shallot vinegar, or the juice of half a lemon, pour over, and serve. The sauce may also be prepared according to the directions given in the preceding recipe.
A straightforward poach-and-pan-sauce built entirely from one fish. The only technical demand is restraint: the fillets cook in under five minutes and the sauce must not be boiled once the arrowroot goes in.
- A wine-glassfulIn Victorian cookery books a wine-glass is reckoned at about 2 fl oz, so a quarter of a cup. That is barely enough to film a wide pan, which is the point — the fillets steam-poach rather than swim.
- The head-and-bone stockHalf a pint (about a US cup plus three tablespoons) of water over the frames of two or three soles will give a light fumet in twenty minutes or so. Simmer gently and strain; fish bones are generally held to turn bitter and cloudy if boiled hard or cooked much beyond half an hour.
- Timing the filletsTwo and a half minutes a side is right for thin sole fillets in barely simmering liquid, and the book means it literally. Thicker fillets of flounder or plaice need a minute more; anything cooked until it flakes freely has already gone dry.
- Arrowroot, not flourSlake the arrowroot in a spoonful of cold water first, stir it into the hot liquid off the heat, and bring it back only to a bare shiver. Arrowroot thickens near 170F and thins again if held at a boil, which is why it gives that clear, glossy finish a flour roux cannot.
- Quantities the original omitsFor the amount of liquid here, roughly a teaspoon of arrowroot is enough. Two ounces of butter is 4 tablespoons; the recipe adds it to the liquid before the thickening goes in.
- Shallot vinegarA pantry staple then, rarely bought now: shallots steeped in white wine vinegar for a week or two. The lemon alternative the recipe offers works, though it reads sharper and less aromatic.
- What "a la maitre d'hotel" means hereThe name signals the butter-parsley-lemon treatment rather than any particular sauce recipe, which is why the book can shrug and refer you back to the preceding entry. It is the house style of a kitchen with no time for a long sauce.
- Sourcing and yieldTrue Dover sole is expensive and often unavailable; lemon sole, witch, plaice or flounder all behave much the same way, though Dover sole holds a notably firmer texture. Two or three soles filleted will serve three or four, depending on the size of the fish; the recipe does not say.
Sole was the prestige flatfish of nineteenth-century British cookery — Cassell's devotes a long run of entries to it, poached, fried, filleted, grilled and sauced a dozen ways — largely because the Victorian railway network could move Dover sole from the Channel ports to inland kitchens fast enough to arrive respectable. The maitre d'hotel label, generally traced to French restaurant practice of the earlier 1800s, came to mean the simplest possible dressing of butter, chopped parsley and acid. What marks this version out is the economy: the heads and bones become the poaching liquid, the poaching liquid becomes the sauce, and nothing leaves the pan. Arrowroot is used as the thickener rather than flour, for anything meant to look clear and delicate on the plate.