Home › The Principles of Cookery › Sole, Grenade Of
Sole, Grenade Of
When there are any remains of cooked fish they may be used with a large fresh sole as follows. Lift the cooked fish from the bone, and tear it into flakes. Mix with it a third of its bulk in finely-grated bread-crumbs, and add half an anchovy freed from bone and finely pounded, a tea-spoonful of chopped parsley, the yolk of a hard-boiled egg, and a little pepper and salt. Mix these ingredients thoroughly, work in with the finger two ounces of fresh butter, and add one raw egg to bind the forcemeat together. Clean, scale, and skin the sole, split it open, and carefully remove the bone. In its place spread the forcemeat, put the two halves of the sole together again, and fasten them in their position with four small skewers. Put the fish into a well-buttered baking-dish, pour a cupful of stock round it, and bake in a moderately-heated oven. When done enough, take it up, strain the gravy, and flavour it with a spoonful of the liquor in which gherkins have been pickled, and a spoonful of caper vinegar. Make it hot, pour it round the fish, and serve. Time to bake the sole, about half an hour. Probable cost, 2s. Sufficient for three or four persons.
A Victorian way of stretching yesterday's fish: a boned sole packed with a forcemeat of flaked leftovers and baked in stock. The hinge is the boning — the fish has to hold its shape around the stuffing, so work from the top with a thin flexible knife and leave the skin-side flesh intact.
- Moderately-heated ovenRead this as 350–375F. A sole is thin and the filling contains raw egg, so a middling heat cooks both through without drying the flesh.
- TimingHalf an hour suits a large sole with a solid core of forcemeat, as the recipe states. Check at 20 minutes: the flesh should be opaque and the stuffing set, not wet. Modern practice puts fish at 145F at the centre.
- The leftover fishAny cooked white fish works; the recipe does not say which. It should have been refrigerated promptly and used within a day, and it wants to be cold and dry when you flake it, or the forcemeat turns to paste.
- Half an anchovyThis means half of a whole salt-cured anchovy, boned and mashed, not half a tin — about one modern oil-packed fillet. It is there for savour, not for a fishy note of its own.
- SkewersFour short metal skewers or soaked wooden cocktail sticks pushed through both flaps, or a couple of loops of kitchen twine. Remove them before the fish goes to table.
- A cupful of stockAbout 8 fl oz. Fish stock is the intention; a light chicken stock or dry white wine cut with water will serve. It should come partway up the fish, not cover it.
- Gherkin liquor and caper vinegarA tablespoon of each into the strained cooking liquid. The gravy will be thin and sharp by design; if it tastes weak, reduce it by a third before adding the vinegars, as boiling afterwards blunts them.
- YieldThree or four as a main course, as stated — the forcemeat does a good deal of the feeding.
Grenade in nineteenth-century kitchen French described a stuffed, reshaped and often larded piece of meat or fish — the name is generally traced to its resemblance to a pomegranate or a grenade, a plump body packed full. What the entry really records is the economy that governed a Victorian household with servants and no refrigeration: a large boiled fish appeared at dinner, and its remains had to reappear the next day in a form that did not look like remains. The anchovy, capers and pickle liquor are the period's usual correctives for fish that has already been cooked once and lost some of its savour.