Home › The Principles of Cookery › Sole, Fricasseed
Sole, Fricasseed
Take a pair of large soles and one small one; clean, skin, and fry all three, and drain them on a sieve before the fire to free them from fat. Raise the flesh of the small sole from the bones, tear it into flakes, and mix with it an equal quantity of finely-grated bread-crumbs, a tea-spoonful of picked and chopped parsley, a pinch of grated lemon-rind, and a little pepper and salt. Mix these ingredients thoroughly, and with the fingers work into the mixture two ounces of fresh butter and one egg. Make it up into small balls, and fry these in hot fat. Put half a pint of good stock into a saucepan, thicken it with brown thickening, and add a table-spoonful of lemon-juice and a glassful of port or claret. Season with salt and cayenne, if required. Let it boil till it is thick and smooth, lay the soles and the balls into it, and simmer all gently together till the fish is heated throughout. Lift the soles upon a dish, place the balls round them, pour the sauce over all, garnish with cut lemon and parsley, and serve very hot. Time to simmer the fish in the gravy, three or four minutes. Probable cost, 3s. 6d. Sufficient for four or five persons.
A Victorian "fricassee" of fish: whole fried soles reheated briefly in a thickened wine gravy, with forcemeat balls made from a third sole. The fish is already cooked when it goes into the sauce, so the final simmer is only to heat through.
- The hinge: three or four minutes, no moreThe soles are fully fried before they meet the sauce. Anything past a few minutes at a bare simmer and the fillets shed their flakes into the gravy and turn cottony.
- Imperial measuresHalf a pint of stock is 10 fl oz (about 300 ml), not the American 8. A "glassful" of port or claret in this period generally means a wine glass, roughly 2 to 3 fl oz; the quantity is not precise and can be judged by taste.
- Brown thickeningA flour-and-butter roux cooked to a nut colour, kept ready in some Victorian kitchens and whisked into stock by the spoonful. A modern equivalent is a brown roux of equal weights butter and flour -- start with about half an ounce of each for this quantity of stock and add more if it needs to be thicker -- or a beurre manie if you want it quicker.
- Buying the fishDover sole is the fish meant. Two large soles for the dish and one small one sacrificed for the forcemeat is expensive today; a small plaice, lemon sole or any firm white fillet does the same work in the balls. Ask the fishmonger to skin the soles on both sides.
- Grated bread-crumbsDry crumbs from stale crumb, grated on a box grater, not soft fresh crumbs and not commercial panko. They absorb the egg and butter and hold the balls together; fresh crumbs will make a slack mixture.
- Draining before the fireThe instruction to drain on a sieve before the fire is about keeping the fried fish hot and dry while the sauce is made. A rack in a low oven, 250F, does it without steaming the crust.
- Seasoning the sauceStock, lemon juice and fortified wine reduced together can go sharp and salty at once. Reduce first, then correct with salt and cayenne at the end as the recipe allows.
- Cost and yield3s. 6d. was a noticeable outlay for a single dish in the 1870s, which suggests something better than everyday fare. It serves four or five as written.
"Fricassee" belongs properly to poultry and veal cut up and finished in a sauce; what makes this one a fricassee is the reheating in a thickened, wine-sharpened gravy rather than any cutting up -- though fricassees of fish appear in English cookery books well before the Victorian period. Cassell's, compiled in the 1870s and reissued for decades after, shows the economy underneath the extravagance -- a third, smaller sole is bought purely to be flaked into forcemeat balls, so nothing is served plain and the dish fills a large platter. Forcemeat balls of this kind, bound with egg and butter and fried separately, were a common garnish for made dishes of fish or game in the period. The port or claret marks this as a dressed fish dish rather than a plain fried one.