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Soles au Parmesan (Dressed with Cheese)
(Soles Dressed with Cheese.) Ingredients.
Two medium-sized Soles.
One ounce of Flour.
One tablespoonful of Mushroom Juice.
Two ounces of Butter.
One gill of Milk.
One ounce and a half of grated Parmesan.
The book gives quantities only, with the method assumed known to a trained cook: the flour and butter make a roux, the milk a thick sauce, and the cheese goes both into the sauce and over the top to glaze. A few of the measures need translating before you can judge the proportions.
- The gillIn a British book of this period a gill is a quarter of an imperial pint, 5 fl oz or about 142 ml. That is a very small amount of liquid against an ounce of flour, so the sauce as written is stiff — closer to a panada. It can be slackened with a few spoonfuls of fish stock or cream to coating consistency.
- Mushroom juiceNot mushroom ketchup, though that was the cheap substitute. Mushroom juice meant the liquor pressed or stewed from chopped mushrooms, used as a savoury seasoning before commercial stock concentrates. A tablespoon of strained liquid from mushrooms sweated in butter does the same job.
- The solesThe book specifies only 'soles'. Skinned and filleted, each fish gives four fillets, so two soles give eight — a starter for four or a light main for two. Lemon sole or any firm flatfish fillet substitutes without complaint, but the flesh should be white and fine-grained or the cheese overwhelms it.
- Parmesan quantityAn ounce and a half is roughly 45 g, or about half a cup finely grated. Divide it: half stirred into the sauce off the heat, half scattered over the top for browning.
- GlazingThe original would have been finished under a salamander, an iron plate heated red and held over the dish. A grill or broiler at full heat for two or three minutes does the same; the point is to colour the surface without cooking the fish further.
- Cooking the fishSole fillets are thin and need very little — poaching in milk or a hot oven at 400F for six to eight minutes until just opaque. Anything longer and the fish tightens and weeps liquid into the sauce.
- SeasoningNo salt or pepper is listed, which is normal for these books. Parmesan carries salt, so season the sauce after the cheese goes in, and add a scrape of nutmeg or a little cayenne, a common Victorian partner to cheese sauces.
Parmesan reached British kitchens as a hard keeping cheese long before fresh Italian cheeses were available, and by the late nineteenth century it had a settled place in the professional repertoire as a grating cheese for gratins, soufflés and soups. Dishes labelled au parmesan or au gratin appear throughout the fish chapters of English and Scottish high-class cookery manuals, sole being among the flatfish on which a cook was expected to demonstrate technique. The bare ingredient list here is typical of books that take a good deal for granted: the sauce is an ordinary béchamel, the method was assumed from an earlier page, and the recipe records only the proportions that distinguish this dish from the dozen others built on the same foundation.