Snowdon Pudding
It would not be surprising if a great controversy should arise about this pudding, perilous to the peace of England and Wales. It is a Welsh pudding with a Welsh name, which has been altered and consecrated into the Albert pudding. The Welsh harpers are certain one day in their Eistedfodds to make a noise about this tyrannous forgetfulness of their nationality. Truth, however, must prevail, though the world and all the Welsh hills should come to an end; and the truth / Sole is, that a bad Albert pudding, or one made with common materials, will make a good Snowdon pudding.
SOLE is certainly the most useful of all the fish that visit us in London-not only being delicate of flavour and easily digested, but being also of convenient size-large or small, as one could wish; being found in plenty; cheap enough; in season all the year; and keeping sweet longer than any of the finny tribe. He is boiled, baked, and fried, but seldom stewed; and there is yet another mode of making his acquaintance-namely, on the gridironwhich is almost peculiar to England. Broiled Sole. The broiled sole of England is worthy of not less fame than the beef-steak and the mutton-chop. It is not often seen at dinner, but it is a favourite at the breakfast-table; and it is in its way among the varieties of fish as perfect as a mutton-chop among the varieties of flesh. Grill it in the simplest fashion; sprinkle it with pepper and salt; and serve it with a pat of fresh butter rubbed over it.
Boiled Sole. Plain boiled in salt and water. Many people like it, mostly women. Small soles or slips are served in waterzootje at Greenwich, but not with very brilliant success.
Sole au Vin Blanc. - Sole boiled in white wine, and served with white wine sauce. Put the sole, carefully trimmed, into a flat fishpan of its own size. Surround it with slices of a small onion, a faggot of sweet-herbs, a clove, four peppercorns, and a little salt. Put upon it a piece of butter the size of a walnut, pour in white French wine enough to cover it, and closing the lid of the pan, set it to boil for ten or fifteen minutes, according to the size of the sole. When done put the sole on a dish, and keep it hot for a moment while the sauce is prepared from its liquor. This is done by removing from it the onion slices and Sole the faggot; by shaking into it, on the angle of the stove, some yolk of egg, till it slightly thickens; lastly, by straining it over the fish. Care must be taken not to use too much egg. For a small sole half a yolk ought to be enough.
Sole à la Normande (the Normandy matelote). -The following receipt, with the alteration of a word or two, is borrowed from Gouffé, who says that he had it direct from Langlais, the chef of the Rocher de Cancale, who invented it. Butter a silver dish; strew it with onions chopped fine and previously blanched; season the sole with pepper and salt; put it on the dish; cover it with white French wine, and cook it in the oven. In the meantime prepare some mussels, oysters, mushrooms, fried smelts, and crusts for garnish. Add the liquor of the sole and that of the mussels to some mock Velvet-down, reduce it, and thicken it with yolk of egg. Place the mussels, oysters, and mushrooms on the sole; pour over all some sauce; return the dish to the oven for five minutes, being careful not to brown the sauce, which should be of a rich cream colour; garnish the top with the fried smelts and the crusts; and serve the remaining sauce in a boat.
Baked Sole (Sole au Gratin). - Some people speak of the Normandy matelote as being baked because it is done in the oven; but an oven, like a fire, will boil as well as roast, and the Normandy sole has no sign of baking or roasting upon it. It is different with the sole au gratin. Take a silver dish, or any other which will stand the heat of the oven. Make a cut down each side of the backbone of the sole; season it with salt and pepper; put it into the dish with a lump of butter in the furrows; and strew all about the fish two teaspoonfuls of mushrooms, one of parsley, and one of shalot. Moisten this with a glass of white French wine; powder all well with bread-raspings, and put it in the oven for fifteen or twenty minutes, to cook Sorrel and to take colour. The colour may afterwards be helped out with the salamander. Fillets of sole may be done in the same way.
Fried Sole. The French way has always been to steep the sole in milk for a few minutes, to flour it well, and then to put it in the frying-kettle. But nobody ever uses this method in England; and even in France, when the fish is wanted at its best, the Sole frite à l'Anglaise carries the day. It must be perfectly dry to begin with, and is sometimes very lightly dredged with flour in order to make the breadcrumbs which are to follow adhere the better. After the flour it is brushed with egg, then laid on the finest breadcrumbs, first one side then the other, then passed into the frying-kettle for from six to ten minutes. Finally, sprinkle it with salt and serve it with half a lemon and parsley fried crisp. As a rule cooks do not make the parsley crisp enough to be eaten with pleasure, which is a great mistake, because its delicate bitter goes admirably with fried fish.
Colbert's Sole. This is the grand French way of frying a sole, and is described under the name of Colbert.
Fried Fillets of Sole. -These are done as a whole sole would be, but the best are known under the following name:- Fillets of Sole à la Horly. They are described among the Horlys, and are sent to table with fried parsley and tomato sauce.
The page is a printer's accident: a two-sentence squib on Snowdon pudding runs straight into the book's long alphabetical entry on sole, which is where the actual cooking is. The Snowdon pudding itself is only cross-referenced (a bad Albert pudding, we are told, makes a good one) — treat the sole preparations as the recipes here.
- The hinge: none of these sauces may boilBoth the vin blanc and the Normande are finished with egg yolk off the direct heat — Kettner says "on the angle of the stove" for a reason. Above about 180F the yolk curdles and the sauce breaks; hold it below a simmer and stir until it just coats.
- Cooking times are for whole Victorian solesTen to fifteen minutes of poaching suits a whole 1-1.5 lb Dover sole on the bone. A modern skinned fillet is done in three or four minutes, and lemon sole fillets in less; go by opacity, not the clock.
- "Mock Velvet-down"Kettner's anglicisation of velout e9 with fish or veal stock rather than milk; the "mock" qualifier points to a shorter-cut version, though this page does not say how it was made. Any decent fish velout e9 answers.
- Bread-raspingsDried crusts grated to a fine powder, the Victorian equivalent of dry breadcrumbs. Panko is coarser than intended for the gratin, though it browns well; for the fried sole use the finest dry crumbs you have, as the recipe specifies.
- Oven and salamanderThe book gives no temperature, only "put it in the oven" for fifteen to twenty minutes; a hot oven is implied for the gratin, while the Normande must be kept from browning. The salamander -- a heated iron disc held over the dish to colour it -- is now simply the broiler, used for a minute at most; the sauce should end a cream colour, not browned.
- Silver dishRead as any shallow flameproof gratin dish. Silver was specified because the dish went to table; it also conducts heat fast, so an ovenproof metal or enamelled pan is closer to the original than thick stoneware.
- A faggot of sweet-herbsA small bundle tied with string — parsley stalks, thyme and a bay leaf is the standard reading. It is removed before the sauce is finished.
- Smelts, and the frying kettleWhole small smelts, floured and deep-fried, are the traditional garnish for sole à la Normande; whitebait or small sprats stand in. The "frying-kettle" is a deep pan of fat at 350-375F, which gives the six to ten minutes quoted for a whole crumbed sole.
- YieldOne whole sole per person for the fried, broiled and gratin versions; the Normande, with its mussels, oysters and mushrooms, will stretch one large sole to two as a course.
Kettner's Book of the Table (1877) carried the name of Auguste Kettner, the Soho restaurateur, but was written by the journalist E. S. Dallas, and this page shows both his manner and the book's alphabetical structure at its most abrupt. Snowdon pudding is a Welsh suet pudding, traditionally associated with the inns at the foot of Snowdon and with the Pen-y-Gwryd, moulded in a basin lined with raisins and flavoured with lemon marmalade; the "Albert pudding" Dallas grumbles about is often said to have been the same idea renamed for the Prince Consort, which is the sort of borrowing that irritated him. The sole entry that follows is more revealing of London in the 1870s: sole was landed in quantity, kept better than most fish before mechanical refrigeration, and so became the everyday luxury of the city he English manner, or dressed up in the French one after Langlais of the Rocher de Cancale, whose Normandy sole reached Dallas by way of Gouffé's cookbooks.