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White-Wine Sauce for Sole
First boil a large sole in the white wine. To do this, cleanse and trim the sole, and put it into a shallow fish-kettle just large enough to hold it. Skin a small onion, and cut it into dice; sprinkle them over the fish, and add a little salt, a small bunch of sweet herbs, six peppercorns, and one clove. Pour over the sole as much French white wine as will cover it, and let it boil gently till done enough. Strain the liquor, put it into a small saucepan, place it by the side of the fire, and stir into it, gently and gradually, the yolk of an egg. As soon as it begins to thicken take it from the fire and pour it over the fish. Time to boil the sole, according to size.
This is really two operations in one: a wine court-bouillon for the sole, then a liaison sauce made from the strained cooking liquor. Everything depends on keeping both below boiling point.
- The hinge: the egg yolkOnce the yolk goes in, the liquor must never boil or it will scramble into threads. Take the pan off direct heat, whisk a ladle of the hot liquor into the yolk first, return it, and hold at about 160-170F, stirring, until it coats a spoon.
- "Boil gently" means poachA rolling boil breaks sole apart and toughens it. Keep the liquid at a bare tremble, 160-175F, with the surface barely moving.
- TimingThe original leaves this to judgement. A whole Dover sole of about 1 lb needs roughly 8-10 minutes; fillets 3-4 minutes. It is done when the flesh parts cleanly from the backbone.
- VesselA fish kettle is a long lidded pan with a lifting trivet. A deep roasting tin on the hob, or a wide sauté pan for fillets, does the same job; the point is a vessel just big enough, so you do not need a whole extra bottle of wine to cover the fish.
- How much wineCovering a whole sole in a snug pan can take the better part of a 750 ml bottle, depending on the fish and the vessel. The recipe says only 'French white wine'; a dry, lightly oaked white such as Muscadet, Chablis or Aligote suits it best. Avoid anything sweet or heavily oaked.
- Sweet herbsA Victorian bunch of sweet herbs was usually parsley, thyme and bay tied together, close to a bouquet garni, though the term covered a wider range of pot-herbs. Tie it so you can pull it out before straining.
- Reducing the liquorThe original strains the liquor and thickens it as it is. If you find it thin, you can reduce it over brisk heat before adding the yolk, but this is a modern addition, not part of the recipe.
- YieldOne large sole with its sauce serves two as a main course. One yolk is enough for about 1 cup of reduced liquor; scale the yolks with the volume, not with the fish.
White-wine sauce for fish is one of the small workhorses of nineteenth-century English cookery books, and it demonstrates a technique - cooking a fish in a flavoured liquid and then turning that liquid into the sauce, so nothing is thrown away. The method is a plain domestic descendant of the French sauce vin blanc, which in a professional kitchen would have been built on fish fumet and finished with yolks and butter. Sole was a fashionable fish in Victorian London, landed on the south and east coasts and moved inland by rail, and it appears frequently in these books. The egg-yolk liaison is older than roux-based sauces in English practice, and it survives in this book as a reminder of how sauces were thickened before flour became the default.