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SOLE, LEMON (a la Lisbon)
Take two good-sized lemon soles, slit the fish on both sides, and pour in a little anchovy sauce. Butter a fire-proof dish, put a little chopped parsley in, and two mushrooms, sliced. Then place the fish in, grate a little cheese over, add a dusting of black pepper, a few pats of butter, and bake in a moderate oven for half an hour. Serve in the dish in which the fish are cooked.
A one-dish baked fish that needs almost nothing from the cook except restraint with the clock. The original half-hour will overcook it.
- Timing is the hingeTwo whole lemon soles of about 12 oz each need 15-18 minutes at 350F; fillets need 8-10. Half an hour dries the flesh and it starts to weep liquid into the dish. Test at the thickest point near the head: the flesh should just part from the bone and look opaque, not chalky.
- Moderate oven350F (180C, gas 4). If you are cooking fillets rather than whole fish, 400F for a shorter time gives a better surface on the cheese.
- Lemon sole is not a soleIt is a flatfish of the dab and flounder family, sweeter and softer than true Dover sole, and it collapses faster. Any small flatfish works here atter plaice or dab; adjust time by thickness rather than by name.
- "Slit the fish on both sides"Score through the skin down the line of the backbone and lift the flesh slightly away from the bone with the knife tip, so there is a pocket to spoon sauce into. Two or three shallow diagonal cuts on the dark side also stop the fish curling as it bakes.
- Anchovy sauceIn cookery books of this period this meant a thin white sauce or melted butter flavoured with anchovy essence, or the bottled commercial sauce sold for fish. A tablespoon of butter mashed with a couple of chopped anchovy fillets, or a teaspoon of anchovy paste loosened with cream, does the same job. A little goes far: the fish should taste savoury, not salty.
- Fire-proof dishAny shallow gratin dish, ideally just large enough to hold both fish flat. Serving in the cooking dish is not merely economy moving a baked flatfish tears it.
- The cheese"Grate a little cheese over" means a hard, dry cheese used as seasoning Parmesan or a well-aged Cheddar, perhaps two tablespoons in total. A generous modern handful of soft grated cheese will mask the fish and release fat.
- MushroomsTwo sliced raw mushrooms will give up water in a shallow dish. Slice them thin and lay them under the fish, as directed, so the liquid becomes part of the sauce rather than pooling over the cheese.
- YieldTwo whole lemon soles serve two as a main course, or four as a light first course with bread. No accompaniment is given; buttered new potatoes and watercress are in keeping.
Cassell's was a compiler's dictionary rather than a single author's manuscript, gathering thousands of short entries under alphabetical headwords. What the recipe does reflect genuinely is the reach of two industrial products of the period: bottled anchovy sauce and essence, and imported hard cheese, which together let a household season fish savoury without a stockpot. The instruction to serve in the cooking dish also marks a shift in middle-class dining: fireproof earthenware and porcelain that could go from oven to table became widely available in the second half of the nineteenth century, and cookery writers seized on them for dishes that would not survive being turned out.