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Browned Crumbs
Egg. Bread-crumbs.
Two Soles. Eight Oysters. Seasoning. Skin and fillet the soles, season, and sprinkle the fillets with lemon-juice, roll them up, and cook them in a cool oven. Blanch and beard the oysters and cover with Hollandaise sauce, egg, D2 crumb, and fry them. Coat the cooked fillets of sole with Hollandaise sauce, and place them in a line down each side of an entrée dish, put the brown crumbs in the centre and the oysters on top. Serve very hot.
A composed entrée in the late-Victorian manner: baked rolled sole under hollandaise, fried crumbed oysters, and a bed of browned crumbs between them. The written recipe assumes you already know the book's basic preparations, so most of the work is filling in what it leaves out.
- The title and the missing crumbsThe title and the crumbs -- "brown crumbs" are called for in the centre of the dish but their preparation is not described; the heading may be a running head rather than the dish's own name. Bread-crumbs do appear in the short ingredient list, though it is not said whether they are for the crumbing, the garnish, or both. Browned crumbs were usually fresh breadcrumbs tossed in butter over moderate heat until dry, even and light brown, then drained on paper. They must be crisp, not greasy, or the plate turns to paste.
- "D2 crumb"Almost certainly a cross-reference to the book's standard egging-and-crumbing method rather than an ingredient (or a misprint for such a reference). Read it as: dip in beaten egg, then in fine dry breadcrumbs.
- A cool ovenAround 275-300F. The fillets are meant to set gently in their own moisture without colouring or curling; a hotter oven squeezes the sole dry. Rolled fillets of this size take roughly 12-15 minutes and are done when opaque throughout, about 145F at the centre.
- Blanch and beardBearding means trimming off the dark frill of gill and muscle around the oyster. Blanch them briefly in their own liquor — barely a minute, just until the edges ruffle — then drain and cool before coating. Oysters held in heat any longer shrink and go rubbery, and they get a second cooking in the fryer.
- Hollandaise as a coatingThe oysters are dipped in cool, thick hollandaise so it will cling under the crumbs, which means the sauce must be made stiff and allowed to firm up. The sauce for masking the sole should be looser and warm. It is easier to make one batch and hold part of it aside to thicken than to try to do both jobs with one consistency.
- Frying the oystersDeep fat at 375F, in small batches, 60-90 seconds until the crumbs are gold. Hollandaise under a crumb coat is fragile; chill the coated oysters for 20 minutes first so they hold together.
- Assembly and timingEverything must be finished within a few minutes of each other, which is why the original ends "serve very hot." Warm the entrée dish, lay the crumbs down the centre last of all, and put the oysters on at the table door.
- YieldThe recipe gives no quantities. Two soles filleted would give eight rolled fillets; with a dozen oysters that would serve about four as a first course.
The recipe names three separate preparations, gives measurements for none of them, and refers you to the book by code. Sole and oysters together were a fixture of British and Anglo-French restaurant menus — oysters in particular were still an everyday food rather than a luxury for much of the nineteenth century, and the shift in their status came later, with overfishing and disease in the native beds. What the dish was judged on was its arrangement: two lines of pale sauced fillets, a ridge of gold crumbs down the middle, and the fried oysters set along the top.