Home › The Principles of Cookery › SOLE, BAKED (au Gratin)
SOLE, BAKED (au Gratin)
Choose a thick sole as fresh as possible. Cleanse it, remove the gills, scale it, and strip off the dark skin by cutting it at the tail end and drawing it over the head. Wash the fish well, and wipe it dry; trim away the fins, and with a sharp knife make an incision a quarter of an inch deep down each side of the backbone on the skinned side. Butter a baking-dish rather thickly, and lay the sole in it. Sprinkle a little pepper and salt over it, and a few fine bread-raspings, and add about a dozen mushrooms chopped small, a small handful of picked, washed, and chopped parsley-leaves, and one finely-minced shallot. Cover the surface of the sole thickly with fine raspings, and moisten the fish with a glassful of French white wine, a tea-spoonful of anchovy essence, and a table-spoonful of mushroom ketchup. Put the dish in the oven till the sole is done enough. If the dish in which the fish is baked is suitable, serve the fish in it; if not, lift the fish carefully with a fish slicer, lay it on a hot dish, and pour the sauce over. Another table-spoonful of wine may be added to the sauce. If the surface of the fish is not sufficiently coloured, a salamander or red-hot shovel may be held over it for a few minutes. When expense is a consideration, a glassful of cider or perry will be found an excellent substitute for the light wine. Time to bake, ten to fifteen minutes, according to the size of the sole. Probable cost, 1s. to 1s. 6d. for a good-sized sole. Sufficient for three persons.
A whole flatfish baked under a crumb crust with wine and mushrooms — quick cooking, but the original leaves out the oven temperature, as Victorian books usually did.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given; coal ranges had no thermostat. Ten to fifteen minutes for a whole sole suggests a fairly hot oven, and around 425F is a reasonable modern equivalent, though the book itself gives no indication either way. The fish is done when the flesh parts cleanly from the backbone at the incision.
- The scoring is the pointThe scoring -- The quarter-inch cuts either side of the backbone are usually explained as practical rather than decorative: they let heat into the thickest part so the fish cooks through in the same time as the thin edges, and they help stop the sole buckling as it sets.
- Bread-raspingsDried crusts grated fine — closer to fine dry breadcrumbs than to fresh. Panko is too coarse and too pale; use dry unseasoned crumbs, or grate stale crust and sieve it.
- A glassful of wineGenuinely ambiguous in this period; a wine glass of the day ran roughly 2 to 4 fl oz. Start at 1/3 cup for a large sole — enough to make a sauce in the dish without steaming the crust soft.
- Anchovy essence and mushroom ketchupBoth were bottled staples that gave savoury depth. For the first use half a teaspoon of anchovy paste or two mashed salted fillets; for the second, a tablespoon of mushroom ketchup if you can find it, otherwise Worcestershire sauce plus a little soy is a common substitute.
- SalamanderA flat iron disc heated in the fire and held over food to brown it. Two or three minutes under a hot broiler does the same thing — watch it, since dry crumbs over a thin fish go from gold to black quickly.
- PerryFermented pear juice, not a pear soda. Dry cider works as the recipe suggests; period cider and perry were generally drier and sharper than the sweeter modern ciders, so choose accordingly.
- The fish itselfTrue Dover sole is expensive and often unavailable. Lemon sole, dab or a thick whole flounder behave the same way; fillets will work but need closer to 8 minutes and no scoring.
- YieldThree portions from one good-sized whole sole, as stated. Serve it in the baking dish if it is presentable — the sauce is thin and does not travel well between dishes.
Au gratin in nineteenth-century English kitchens meant almost exactly what it means here: a dish finished with a browned crumb surface, from what is generally traced to the French gratter, to scrape — the scrapings and raspings of dried bread being the cheapest possible crust. Cassell's appeared in the 1870s and was reissued for decades, aimed at middle-class households who wanted French technique at English prices, which is why the entry ends by pricing a sole at a shilling to eighteenpence and then offers cider or perry to anyone who cannot justify white wine. The bottled flavourings are equally of their moment: anchovy essence and mushroom ketchup were industrial products widely sold, and Victorian recipes lean on them the way later cooks lean on stock cubes. The red-hot shovel held over the crust is the giveaway that this was written for a coal range, before the domestic gas grill arrived.