Home › The Principles of Cookery › Sole, Filleted, and Served with Mussels
Sole, Filleted, and Served with Mussels
Fillet a large fresh sole, divide the fillets into halves, rub them with a freshly-cut lemon, and let them stand in a cool place for an hour. Wash and brush a quart of mussels; put them into a saucepan without any liquor, and put with them a tea-spoonful of salt, a pinch of grated lemon-rind, half a blade of mace, two allspice, half a bay-leaf, and, if liked, a piece of garlic the size of a pea. Lay a clean cloth upon the fish, and shake the pan over the fire till the shells open. Turn them out, beard them, and take out the moss and a small crab which may be inside, and strain the liquor. Put the filleted soles into a saucepan with a slice of fresh butter, and add a small glassful of Madeira and an equal quantity of the strained liquor. Let them boil up once, then draw the saucepan to the side, and simmer very gently until done enough. Put in the mussels and the remainder of the liquor; simmer the preparation for two minutes. Lay the soles on a dish, put the mussels upon them, and keep them hot till the sauce is ready. Let the sauce cool for half a minute, stir quickly into it the yolk of an egg beaten up with two table-spoonfuls of thick cream, and when it is smooth pour it over the fish. Serve immediately. Time to simmer the soles, about ten minutes. Probable cost, one large sole, 1s. 6d. to 2s. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A late-Victorian restaurant dish that still works: poached sole in a Madeira-and-mussel liquor, finished with an egg-and-cream liaison. Two things need adjusting — the poaching time and the way the sauce is thickened.
- The hinge: the liaison must not boilThe instruction to let the sauce cool for half a minute before stirring in the egg yolk and cream is the whole technique. Add the yolk to liquid still at a boil and it scrambles; after that, keep the sauce below a simmer (around 180F) until it coats a spoon.
- Ten minutes is too long for soleHalf-fillets of sole are a few millimetres thick and are done in three to four minutes at a bare simmer, so the book's ten minutes is likely generous; go by opacity, not the clock.
- MusselsBuy live mussels with closed shells, or shells that close when tapped, and discard any that stay open before cooking or refuse to open after. A quart is roughly 1.5 lb / 700 g in the shell, which yields a modest cupful once bearded.
- "Beard them, take out the moss and a small crab"The beard is the byssus thread the mussel uses to anchor itself — pull it toward the hinge. The "moss" is weed caught in the shell, and the "small crab" is the pea crab, a harmless commensal that used to be common in wild mussels and is rarely seen in farmed ones.
- Straining the liquorMussel liquor carries grit. Strain it through muslin or a coffee filter, not just a sieve, and taste before adding any further salt — the liquor already carries the teaspoonful cooked with the mussels, and is saline besides.
- Mace and allspiceBlade mace steeps more cleanly than ground and can be lifted out; if you substitute ground mace, use no more than a pinch, as blade-to-ground conversions vary. "Two allspice" means two whole berries.
- A small glassful of MadeiraAn imprecise Victorian measure; a wineglassful was conventionally about 2 fl oz (60 ml), so read a "small glassful" as no more than that, matched by the same amount of mussel liquor. A dry or medium-dry Madeira such as Sercial or Verdelho suits the dish better than a sweet one.
- The lemon rubThe fillets are only rubbed with a cut lemon, not steeped; the hour's rest firms and whitens the surface rather than flavouring it. Pat them dry before they go into the butter.
- YieldOne large sole gives eight half-fillets; four is the safer count, with the book's five only at a light serving.
Cassell's belonged to the era when mussels were cheap coastal food and sole was not — the price note of 1s. 6d. to 2s. for a single large sole puts the fish at a significant fraction of a working household's daily budget, while the quart of mussels was an afterthought. Pairing them is a French-derived move: sole normande, generally traced to Parisian restaurant cooking of the 1830s, established the template of poached sole under a rich liaison-thickened sauce garnished with shellfish. The egg-yolk-and-cream finish here is the classic liaison rather than a flour-thickened velouté, which is why the recipe is so insistent about cooling the pan first. The casual mention of the pea crab is a reminder of what might be found inside a mussel.