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SOLE (au Gratin, a la Francaise)
Mix together from three to four ounces of mushrooms, a table-spoonful of parsley, and two ounces of shallot. Add a table-spoonful or two of bread-crumbs, a pinch of salt and pepper, and a slice of bacon cut into small dice. Butter a fire-proof dish, lay the above seasoning on, then put on the fish, either whole or neatly filleted, sprinkle it with a little of same seasoning as is put below it, then pour over it a glass of white wine and a little good fish stock; sprinkle more bread-crumbs over, and put bits of butter on; bake moderately, and serve hot in the same dish.
A straightforward gratin: a bed of chopped aromatics, the fish, wine and stock, crumbs and butter on top. Almost everything that can go wrong here is a matter of timing and of how finely the duxelles-style base is chopped.
- Chop the base fineMushrooms, parsley and shallot should be chopped to a near-mince so the layer under the fish cooks through in the same time the sole does. Left in coarse pieces the shallot stays raw and harsh.
- Two ounces of shallotThat is roughly two large shallots or three or four small ones, about 1/3 to 1/2 cup once chopped. It is a generous amount for one or two soles and is meant to be assertive.
- A glass of wineIn Victorian cookery writing a wine glass is usually reckoned at about 2 fl oz and a tumbler at about 8; the recipe does not say which, so read it as somewhere between 2 and 4 fl oz of dry white. Enough to come partway up the fish, not to poach it.
- Bake moderately"Moderate" is conventionally read as around 350F/180C, though the recipe gives no setting. Reckon roughly 12 to 18 minutes for fillets depending on thickness and 20 to 25 for a whole sole; the flesh should just part from the bone. Sole is thin and turns cottony quickly, so check early rather than trusting a clock.
- Render the bacon firstDiced raw bacon scattered under the fish will not crisp or render properly in fifteen minutes. Fry it briefly and add it, with its fat, to the mushroom mixture.
- Getting the top brownThe oven is too cool and the time too short to colour crumbs well. Dot the butter generously and finish under a hot grill for a minute or two once the fish is done.
- Fish stock"A little good fish stock" means a few tablespoons, not a bath. Sole bones simmered 20 minutes with an onion make a better one than anything sold in a carton; at a pinch use more wine and a splash of water.
- The fish itself"Sole" in a British source of this date most likely means Dover sole. Lemon sole, plaice, flounder or any thin white fillet works the same way, though the sweeter true sole suits the wine and mushroom base best.
- YieldOne whole sole of about 3/4 lb serves one as a main course; the quantity of seasoning here suits two soles, or four fillets, and serves two.
Au gratin in nineteenth-century usage meant simply a dish finished with crumbs and butter and browned in its baking vessel, from the French gratter, to scrape -- originally the crust scraped from the pan. The mushroom, shallot and parsley bed is a loose duxelles, the standard French savoury foundation credited by tradition to the kitchen of the Marquis d'Uxelles in the seventeenth century, and it turns up widely in Victorian fish cookery. The same bed, wine and crumb topping served for turbot, whiting, or any flat white fish a household happened to have. That it is baked and served in one fire-proof dish also reflects a genuine convenience of the period -- no sauce to make separately, and nothing to break when the fish came out of the oven.