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SOLE (a la Miromesnii)
Take three soles, scale them on both sides, and empty them nicely without injuring the flesh. Make an incision on the black side. Fry them without dipping them into flour. When they are done, drain them on a clean cloth, open the place where you have made the incision, cut the bone near the head and tail, and draw it out. Let the fish cool. Mix a lump of butter with some parsley chopped very fine, pepper, salt, and the juice of a lemon. Divide the butter into three equal parts, and put one part into the opening of each sole; close the opening, and make the whole stick by means of the yolk of an egg; put a few crumbs of bread at the joint. Beat two eggs, then dip the soles into them, and next into crumbs of bread, equally on all sides. When dinner-time is come, fry the soles in hot dripping. They are done as soon as they are coloured. The sauce is found in the sole itself.
This is a boned fried sole stuffed with parsley butter — the same idea as a chicken Kiev, and it fails in the same way if the butter escapes. Everything below serves that one point.
- The hinge: chill before the second fryThe soles are fried once, boned, stuffed, breaded, then fried again. Between those stages the fish must go cold and the butter must be firm, or the filling runs out into the fat. Refrigerate the stuffed, breaded soles at least an hour before the final fry.
- Buy them prepared"Scale them on both sides, and empty them nicely" is work a fishmonger will do; ask for whole soles gutted and scaled. Note that the recipe scales rather than skins, so the dark skin stays on — it is the side the incision is made in.
- What fish to useDover sole at 10-12 oz each gives one fish per person; three soles serve three. Lemon sole, plaice, flounder or witch all take the same treatment, though the flesh is softer and needs a gentler hand when the bone comes out.
- The first fry is structuralThe soles are fried without being floured, unusual for fried fish; the recipe does not say why. Cook just until set through, about 3-4 minutes a side, then drain and cool. Overcook here and the fish shreds when you lift the backbone.
- BoningCut through the backbone close to the head and tail with scissors, then lift it out through the incision along the dark side; the pin bones come with it. Work while the fish is warm but not hot.
- The butterA "lump of butter" here is maitre d'hotel butter — reckon on 3 oz (85 g) total for three soles, with a good handful of chopped parsley, salt, pepper and the lemon juice. Beat it, roll it, and chill it hard before dividing it into three.
- Egg yolk as glue"Make the whole stick by means of the yolk of an egg" means painting raw yolk along the cut edges and pressing them together, with breadcrumbs pushed into the seam to seal it. Do this before the egg-and-crumb coating goes on.
- Dripping and heatDripping is rendered meat fat, usually beef; any neutral frying oil does the same job. The recipe says only "hot dripping" and specifies neither depth nor temperature; for crumbed fish, around 350-375F (175-190C) suits, and "done as soon as they are coloured" follows from the fish already being cooked — two to three minutes.
- No sauce"The sauce is found in the sole itself" is literal: the melted parsley butter is the sauce. Serve immediately with lemon, and warn anyone at the table that the first cut releases hot butter.
The name points to the Miromesnil family, and the dish is generally traced to the kitchens associated with Armand Thomas Hue de Miromesnil, Keeper of the Seals under Louis XVI — an attribution that is traditional rather than documented, as with most of the aristocratic surnames attached to French garnishes. The technique is boning a cooked flatfish through a single slit and returning a compound butter to the cavity. Cassell's New Dictionary of Cookery, compiled for a late-Victorian household with a cook and time to spare, prints it without apology for the two separate fryings; the instruction "when dinner-time is come" quietly tells you the fish was expected to sit prepared before the second, decisive plunge into the fat.