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Sole, Baked, with Fine Herbs
Take a thick sole, perfectly fresh. Cleanse, scale, and skin it, and carefully remove the backbone without spoiling the appearance of the fish. Mince separately a shallot and a small handful of picked and washed parsley-leaves. Mix these ingredients, and fry them with a tea-spoonful of powdered sweet herbs in two ounces of butter for five or six minutes. Throw in two table-spoonfuls of bread-crumbs and the well-beaten yolks of two eggs; shake all quickly together for half a minute, and turn the force-meat out to cool. Put it in the place of the bone inside the fish. Put the fish in a buttered baking-dish, sprinkle pepper and salt over it, dredge flour upon it, place little pieces of butter here and there upon it, and add the juice of a lemon and a quarter of a pint of water. Lay the fish in a hot dish, strain the sauce over it, and garnish with cut lemon and parsley. If additional sauce is required, put an ounce of butter and an ounce of flour into a saucepan. Stir these over the fire for two minutes, then add three-quarters of a pint of water and a little pepper and salt. Stir the sauce over the fire till it boils, pour the liquor from the sole into it, and stir into it a table-spoonful of the fried herbs which were used for stuffing the fish, made and preserved for the purpose. Take the sauce off the fire, stir into it until dissolved a slice of fresh butter, and it will be ready for use. Time to bake the sole, ten to fifteen minutes, according to size. Probable cost, 1s. or 1s. 6d. for one large sole. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A straightforward baked stuffed sole, though Cassell's assumes you can bone a flatfish and knows what temperature its own oven runs at. Both gaps are easy to close.
- Oven temperatureNo heat is given, only ten to fifteen minutes. For a stuffed sole in a shallow dish with liquid, 400F is right; the fish is done when the flesh parts cleanly from the frame at the thickest point.
- Imperial measuresA quarter of a pint here is 5 fl oz, not 4, and three-quarters of a pint is 15 fl oz. Imperial pints are 20 fl oz, so US cooks should scale up by a quarter or the sauce will be too thick.
- Boning the soleThe instruction to remove the backbone without spoiling the appearance means slitting down the dark side along the spine, working the fillets loose from the bone on each side, and snipping the backbone free at head and tail. The pocket you open is where the forcemeat goes. A fishmonger will do it if asked for a sole boned for stuffing.
- Which sole'A thick sole' most likely points to Dover sole, thick and firm enough to hold a stuffing, though the book does not name a variety. Lemon sole, witch or plaice will work but are softer and thinner, so cut the baking time to eight or ten minutes and expect a more fragile result.
- Powdered sweet herbsA Victorian storecupboard mixture, usually dried thyme, marjoram, savory and sometimes basil, ground fine. A teaspoon of dried mixed herbs, crushed between the fingers, is the direct equivalent.
- The forcemeatHalf a minute over the heat with the egg yolks sets the mixture just enough to bind without scrambling it. Take the pan off the fire before the yolks go in if your stove runs hot, and spread the mixture on a plate to cool quickly before stuffing.
- The extra sauceThis is a plain white roux thinned with water rather than stock, then enriched with the baking liquor and finished off the heat with cold butter. Do not let it boil again after the butter goes in or it will split. Fish stock in place of the water is a clear improvement.
- Reserved herbsThe sauce calls for a tablespoon of the fried herb mixture "made and preserved for the purpose", meaning you should fry rather more of the shallot, parsley and herbs in butter than the stuffing needs and hold some back.
- YieldOne large sole, serving three or four as written, though a modern portion is closer to two.
Aux fines herbes is a French formula that entered English cookery books in the nineteenth century, and Cassell's translates the terms into plain English. The costing is some guide to audience: a shilling to eighteenpence for a large sole was a real outlay for a family dinner, placing this among the book's more ambitious fish dishes rather than its everyday ones. Sole was landed at Dover and Grimsby and moved inland on the railways, which is why a coastal luxury turns up in a general dictionary aimed at readers everywhere.