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SOLE, FILLETS OF (a la Dieppoise)
Cleanse, wash, and fillet a pair of soles. Roll up the fillets neatly and tie them with tape; put them on in cold water, bring it slowly to the boil, and simmer gently until quite tender. Take them up, drain them, and remove the tapes. Make a mussel sauce as follows. Cook two dozen mussels, take them out of their shells, beard them, and set them aside in a basin. Put the liquor which will have run from them into an enamelled saucepan, heat it to boiling point, mix a dessert-spoonful of flour with a quarter of a pint of cream, stir this into the liquor, add a sprig of parsley and a small onion. And simmer all gently until the sauce is nicely thickened. Add the mussels, pepper, salt, and the juice of half a lemon. Heat by the side of the fire for fifteen minutes, stir in half an ounce of butter, and the sauce is ready. Dish the fillets of sole neatly, pour the sauce over, and serve very hot. SOLE, FILLETS OF (a l'Orly). (See SOLES, FILLETED AND MARINADED.)
A straightforward poached sole with a mussel cream sauce; the two things worth changing are the timings, both of which are far too long for the ingredients involved.
- The fillets need minutes, not tendernessSole fillets are cooked when they turn opaque and just firm; rolled paupiettes need only a few minutes at a bare simmer once the water is up to heat, and rather less than the recipe implies. "Simmer gently until quite tender" invites a fillet that has gone woolly and started to shed.
- Poach in something with flavourCold plain water leaches flavour out of the fish. A court-bouillon, or the mussel liquor let down with water and a splash of dry white wine, gives a far better result and the poaching liquid can then reinforce the sauce.
- TapeCotton tape was one Victorian way of holding paupiettes closed. Kitchen string or a single cocktail stick through each roll does the same job.
- Mussel liquor is sandyWhatever the mussels release will carry grit and shell fragments. Strain it through muslin or a coffee filter before it goes anywhere near cream, and leave the last spoonful behind in the pan.
- Do not hold the mussels for fifteen minutesShelled mussels reheated for a quarter of an hour turn to rubber. Finish and season the sauce first, then fold the mussels in and give them a minute to warm through off the heat.
- MeasuresA quarter of a pint in a British book of this period is 5 fl oz, about two-thirds of a US cup. A dessertspoon is 2 teaspoons — a light thickening for that quantity of liquid, which is the intention.
- Why enamelledCast iron and untinned copper react with the lemon juice and the salty shellfish liquor, dulling the colour and the taste. Any stainless or enamelled pan answers now.
- MusselsTwo dozen is enough for the sauce but not generous; buy closed, heavy shells, discard any that stay shut after cooking, and cook them the day you buy them.
- YieldA pair of soles filleted gives enough rolled fillets to serve two as a main course or four as a fish course in a longer meal.
À la dieppoise points to Dieppe on the Normandy coast, a port whose fishing fleet supplied Paris with sole, and whose mussel and shrimp beds gave the garnish its identity: in classic French practice a dieppoise is poached white fish in a white wine sauce with mussels and shrimps, sometimes mushrooms. Cassell's, compiling an alphabetical dictionary for English households in the later nineteenth century, carried dozens of these French service names because the grander English kitchens of the day were run on a French vocabulary, and a cook needed to know what a menu term committed her to. The English adaptation here is visible in the detail — the fish is poached in plain water rather than wine, and the shrimps are dropped — leaving mussels and cream to do the work. Mussels were then among the cheapest shellfish on the British coast, which is part of why a dish with a Norman name sat comfortably in a general household book.