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Lemon Juice (Wash and dry sole remove skin)
Wash and dry sole, remove skin, trim head, tail, and fins. Make an incision down centre, raising top fillets without removing them. Cut the bone down sides and top and bottom, being careful not to cut fillet underneath. This enables the bone to be removed easily after cooking.
One Sole. One tablespoonful of Flour, mixed with Pepper and Salt. One Egg. White Bread-crumbs. Parsley for frying. Maître d'Hôtel Butter :. Half ounce of Butter. One teaspoonful of Parsley finely chopped. Pepper and Salt. Thoroughly dry the fish in the seasoning, then carefully egg and crumb it, pressing the crumbs well on, and roll back the loosened fillets. Fry in hot fat for three to four minutes, drain. Carefully remove bone, and fill the cavity with pats of Maître d'Hôtel butter and the fried parsley.
Garnish with lemon. Dish on paper.
This is sole Colbert under a garbled headline — a whole sole boned through the back, crumbed, deep-fried and filled with parsley butter. The technique is straightforward but the boning is the part that decides whether the finished fish holds its shape.
- The hinge: cut the bone, not the bottom filletYou are severing the backbone from the flesh along both sides and at head and tail while leaving the under fillet whole, so the spine lifts out in one piece after frying. Work with the tip of a filleting knife and stay against the bone. If you pierce the lower fillet the butter filling leaks out into the fat and the fish collapses.
- "The seasoning""The seasoning" here most likely means seasoned flour — flour with salt and pepper. Dry the fish in it, then egg and crumb; the flour is what makes the egg grip.
- SkinRemove the dark skin entirely. The white skin can stay if you prefer — the recipe says only "remove skin" and does not specify which.
- Frying temperature and time"Hot fat" here means a deep fat bath; in modern terms roughly 350–375F, though the recipe gives no temperature. Three to four minutes suits a small sole; a larger fish will want longer. The crumb should be an even hazelnut brown.
- Maître d'Hôtel butterButter creamed with chopped parsley, lemon juice, salt and pepper, rolled in paper, chilled hard and cut in pats. Make it in advance — soft butter will melt on contact and run out of the cavity before it reaches the table.
- Fried parsleyThe sprigs must be bone dry or the fat will erupt. Dropped into the hot fat they take only a few seconds and should stay bright green; if they darken they are bitter.
- "Dish on paper"A folded napkin or dish paper on the serving plate to absorb fat. A paper towel under a napkin does the same job.
- YieldOne sole per person, served immediately — the crumb softens and the butter runs within a couple of minutes.
Sole prepared this way is generally traced to the Paris restaurant kitchens of the mid-nineteenth century and named for Jean-Baptiste Colbert, Louis XIV's finance minister, whose name was attached to a number of garnishes and preparations by later chefs rather than by any connection of his own. Its appearance in an English cookery collection reflects how far French restaurant practice had reached into the professional English kitchen: the dish assumes a deep fat bath, a supply of compound butters kept ready in the larder, and a cook confident enough to bone a flatfish through the back. Dover sole was among the prestige fish of the London market, and dishing it whole on a napkin — bone gone, cavity full of green butter — was a way of showing off both the fish and the technique at once.