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Sole, Baked
Take a thick and very fresh sole, scale, skin, and trim it, wipe it dry with a soft cloth, and if convenient let it lie folded in this in a cool place for an hour or more before dressing. Season lightly with salt and pepper, flour well, and, if liked, egg and bread-crumb the sole twice. Lay it in a buttered baking-dish, put little pieces of butter here and there upon it, and bake in a moderate oven. Shake the dish occasionally to keep the fish from sticking to the bottom. When done enough, lay it on a reversed sieve before the fire for a few minutes to drain the fat from it. Put it on a hot dish, covered with a napkin, and garnish with parsley and cut lemon. Send melted butter flavoured with anchovy sauce and chilli vinegar to table in a tureen; or make sauce by mixing the gravy which flows from the fish with a little lemon-juice, a tea-spoonful of the essence of anchovies, and a spoonful of stock. A glassful of wine is sometimes added to the sauce thus made, but it is scarcely necessary. If more than one sole is to be baked, it should be remembered that they must be done in single layers, that is, they must not be laid one upon the top of another. Time to bake the sole, ten to fifteen minutes. Probable cost, 1s. 6d. to 2s. 6d. per pair. Sufficient, one good-sized sole for three persons.
A late-Victorian method for whole sole baked rather than fried, with the pan drippings turned into sauce. Most of what needs translating is the oven, the sauce, and the assumption that your fishmonger will do the trimming.
- Moderate ovenConventionally taken as around 350F (180C). The stated ten to fifteen minutes suits a whole sole of a pound or so; a genuinely thick fish may need a little longer. It is done when the flesh lifts cleanly from the backbone at the thickest point.
- "Melted butter" is a sauceIn Victorian usage melted butter means a flour-thickened butter sauce, roughly a tablespoon each of butter and flour cooked together with a cup of water or fish stock, not simply butter melted in a pan. Season it with a little anchovy and a splash of vinegar as directed.
- Essence of anchoviesA concentrated bottled anchovy extract, now largely replaced by anchovy paste from a tube. A teaspoon of paste, or two fillets mashed to a pulp, does the same job.
- Chilli vinegarVinegar steeped with dried red chillies, a common Victorian store-cupboard condiment. A few drops of any hot pepper vinegar, or cider vinegar with a pinch of cayenne, gives the same lift.
- Skinning and scalingDover sole is skinned on the dark side and scaled on the white; a fishmonger will do both in seconds. The hour resting folded in a dry cloth is not idle -- a dry surface is what lets the flour and crumb adhere instead of sliding off in the butter.
- The double crumbingEgg and breadcrumb, then egg and breadcrumb again, builds a crust thick enough to survive baking. It also soaks up butter, which is why the fish is drained afterwards.
- "A reversed sieve before the fire"A wire sieve turned upside down served as a draining rack in front of the open range. A cooling rack set over a tray in a warm oven with the door ajar does the job.
- Single layer, and whyStacked soles steam each other and the crust collapses. Use two dishes rather than crowding one.
- Substitutes and yieldTrue Dover sole is expensive; lemon sole, plaice or flounder behave much the same, though thinner fillets cook in eight to ten minutes. One good sole of a pound or so serves two generously by modern appetites rather than the three claimed here.
Sole was the aristocrat of the Victorian fish course, prized for firm white flesh that held its shape and for keeping better than most fish on the journey to the London markets. Cassell's gives a good many sole recipes, and this one is quietly practical: baking with a crumb coat gets much of the effect of frying without a pan of hot fat and a cook standing over it. The accompanying flavourings -- anchovy essence, chilli vinegar, a bottled sauce stirred into thickened butter -- are typical of a period when the British larder leaned heavily on sharp, salty commercial condiments to season plain fish. The costing, one shilling and sixpence to half a crown a pair, marks it as a middle-class dish rather than an everyday one; the note that a glass of wine in the sauce "is scarcely necessary" might be read as the editors gently discouraging expense.