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Sole, Normande
Choose a thick sole, scale and clean it, and draw off the dark skin by cutting it through at the tail end and drawing it over the head. Butter thickly a dish that will stand the fire, and strew over it some very thin slices of onions. A silver dish is the most suitable for the purpose, as the fish should be served in the dish in which it was baked. Season the sole with salt and pepper, and lay it on the onion; sprinkle a little chopped parsley on the surface, and moisten the fish well with French white wine. Put it in a gentle oven, and bake it until done enough. Take a dozen fine large mussels, cleanse and scrape them, boil them in the usual way, beard and drain them, and lay them on the sole. Make a quarter of a pint of rich white sauce, mix with this the gravy from the sole and a little of that in which the mussels were cooked. Reduce the sauce till it coats the spoon; pour a little of it upon the sole and the mussels, and put the dish again in the oven for a few minutes to make it quite hot, but be careful not to colour the sauce at all. Serve very hot, and send the sauce which remains to table in a tureen. For a superlative dish, oysters and mushrooms may be laid upon the sole, as well as mussels, and the liquor from the oysters may be added to the sauce. Also fried smelts, crayfish, and fried croutons of bread may be used to garnish the dish. When preparing the fish for baking, it should be remembered that cider and perry replaee French wine so well that it is almost needless to employ the latter. The Normans use the best sparkling cider--"Sillerie de Normandie." Time to bake the sole, half to three-quarters of an hour, according to size. Probable cost, one thick sole, 1s. Sufficient for three persons.
A classic sole à la normande, written when a whole thick Dover sole was cheap enough to feed three. Most of the recipe stands; the baking time does not.
- The baking timeHalf to three-quarters of an hour will overcook a sole by modern lights; a whole thick sole needs roughly 15-20 minutes in the oven, until the flesh lifts cleanly from the backbone. The recipe gives no weight, and the longer time may reflect the uncertain heat of a coal-fired range.
- "A gentle oven"A gentle or slow oven is usually reckoned at around 300F, though any modern figure is an approximation. The final reheat after saucing should be brief and the sauce must not colour, as the text insists; a minute or two is enough, or use a low oven rather than a grill.
- A quarter of a pintFive fluid ounces in Imperial measure, so a generous half cup of white sauce before the fish and mussel liquors go in. It will reduce down considerably once you have added them.
- "Rich white sauce"Victorian white sauces were made both with stock and with milk; for this dish a velouté made with fish or veal stock and enriched with cream suits better than a milk béchamel. Roux, stock, cream, then let the cooking liquors do the seasoning; the mussel liquor is salty, so hold back the salt until the end.
- The silver dishAny shallow flameproof or ovenproof gratin dish will serve. The point of the instruction is that the fish is baked and served in the same vessel so none of the juices are lost, and those juices are the backbone of the sauce.
- MusselsSteam in a covered pan with a splash of the cider for 3-4 minutes, just until they gape. Discard any that stay shut, and any that are already open and will not close when tapped. Strain the liquor through muslin to catch grit before it goes near the sauce.
- Cider, not wineThe suggestion of Norman cider is sound and still the more authentic choice, but it must be a dry cider. Modern sweet commercial cider will make the sauce cloying. "Perry" is fermented pear juice.
- Skinning the fishCutting through at the tail and pulling the dark skin over the head works, but a fishmonger will do it in seconds and will also trim the fringe of fine bones from the sides.
- YieldOne thick sole, garnished as described, feeds three as the book says. The oysters, mushrooms, smelts and crayfish of the "superlative" version turn it into a considerably larger dish.
The normande garnish — mussels, oysters, mushrooms, shrimps or crayfish, fried smelts and croutons, bound with a cream-enriched fish velouté — is generally traced to the Paris restaurant cooking of the first half of the nineteenth century rather than to Normandy farmhouses, and it took its name from the coastal produce it assembled rather than from any single regional original. By the time Cassell's was compiled, everything depended on the fish liquor and the mussel liquor being captured and reduced rather than thrown away, which is why the recipe is so insistent that the sole be baked and served in the same dish. The note that cider and perry replace French wine "so well that it is almost needless to employ the latter" is a genuine nod to Normandy, where apples rather than grapes underpin the cooking; "Sillerie de Normandie" borrows the name of a celebrated Champagne village as a compliment to the best sparkling cider.