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Twelve Peppercorns (Two tablespoonfuls of Mushroom)
Two tablespoonfuls of Mushroom Ketchup. One teaspoonful of Cayenne Sauce.
One gill of gravy or Stock.
Mix all the above together, pour into a stewpan, lay the sole in it, and stew for twenty minutes; take out the sole, strain the sauce and pour over the fish.
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A fragment of a longer ingredient list — the title preserves the peppercorns that headed it, and the sole itself is assumed rather than specified. What survives is a simple braise in a sharp, dark sauce.
- The timing is the problemTwenty minutes will reduce sole to cotton wool. A pair of skinned fillets needs four to six minutes in barely simmering liquid; a whole sole on the bone, eight to ten. The fish is done when the flesh has just turned opaque and parts from the bone.
- A gillA quarter of an imperial pint, five fluid ounces, or a generous half cup. With two tablespoons of ketchup and a teaspoon of cayenne sauce that gives roughly three-quarters of a cup of liquid — enough to come partway up a flat fish in a wide pan, not to cover it.
- Mushroom ketchupNot tomato. A thin, near-black, intensely savoury liquid of salted mushrooms, closer to Worcestershire or a light soy in function. Still sold by some British makers; a tablespoon of soy plus a tablespoon of Worcestershire is the nearest common substitute, though saltier.
- Cayenne sauceProbably a bottled pepper-and-vinegar sauce of the sort sold at the time, and a plain Louisiana-style hot sauce is the nearest modern stand-in. A teaspoon of a modern one is about right; avoid the very hot chilli extracts, which are far stronger than anything likely meant here.
- StewpanA lidded pan; period stewpans varied a good deal in depth. Use a wide sauté pan and lay the sole in a single layer — depth here works against you.
- Straining and finishingStraining removes any solids: the twelve peppercorns of the title, if they belonged to this recipe, plus skin or fin debris. The sauce as written stays thin; reduce it hard for a minute after the fish comes out, or whisk in a small knob of butter off the heat, before pouring it over.
- YieldOne sole serves one as a main course, or two as a fish course in a longer meal.
Mushroom ketchup was a workhorse bottled seasoning of the British kitchen long before tomato ketchup displaced it — a salted mushroom liquor used to give depth to gravies, hashes and fish sauces, and a store-cupboard staple from the eighteenth century onward. Sauces of this kind were poured over plainly cooked fish, the sauce rather than the fish carrying the flavour. The truncated form of this entry — an ingredient list beginning mid-stream and ending in a stray initial — may point to a compiled book that gathered contributions with little editorial tidying, or simply to a page broken mid-recipe; the fragment does not settle which.