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Soles, Fried Filleted
Soles for filleting should be large, as the flesh can be more easily separated from the bones, and there is less waste. Skin and wash the fish, and raise the meat carefully from the bones, and divide it into nice handsome pieces. The more usual way is to roll the fillets, after dividing each one in two pieces, and either bind them round with twine, or run a small skewer through them.
Brush over with egg, and cover with breadcrumbs; fry them a nice bright brown, and garnish with fried parsley and cut lemon. When a pretty dish is desired, this is by far the most elegant mode of dressing soles, as they look much better than when fried whole. Instead of rolling the fillets, they may be cut into square pieces, and arranged in the shape of a pyramid on the dish.
TIME. About 10 minutes.
SEASONABLE at any time.
Soles or Plaice, Fried. (Jewish Recipe.) - INGREDIENTS for dish for 4 persons. A pair of soles, or a large plaice, a small flask of salad oil. AVERAGE COST, reckoning half the price of the oil, which may be used again, 2s.
Pour the oil into a deep pan, and lay in the fish cut in neat fillets, and when the oil ceases to bubble, fry the fish a pale golden brown. Drain very thoroughly, and scrve cold with cut lemon and breadand-butter.
TIME.-From 5 to 10 minutes to fry the fish.
SEASONABLE qt any time.
SOLES, WITH MUSHROOMS.
Two related methods sit on this page: the classic egg-and-crumbed fried fillets, and a plainer Anglo-Jewish version fried in oil and eaten cold. Both stand or fall on the fish being dry and the fat hot enough.
- Fat temperatureNeither recipe gives one. For crumbed fillets use deep fat at 350-375F; below that the coating drinks oil and the fish steams. The fillets are thin, so they may colour in rather less than the 10 minutes stated.
- "A pair of soles"Beeton reckons a pair, or one large plaice, as a dish for four. A flatfish yields four fillets, two from each side. Beeton is right that large fish fillet more cleanly, but a fishmonger will skin and fillet them for you in a minute.
- Rolling and skeweringRolled fillets need to be secured or they unwind in the fat. Cocktail sticks are easier than twine and are pulled out before serving. Rolls take longer to cook through than flat pieces, so keep them small and even.
- "A small flask of salad oil"Salad oil in this period usually meant olive oil, sold in flasks; the quantity is not specified here, though the recipe calls for a deep pan. The note that it "may be used again" reflects its cost, which is why only half the price is reckoned in the total.
- "When the oil ceases to bubble"Genuinely ambiguous as written. Read sensibly it means to wait until the initial furious bubbling of moisture leaving the fish subsides, which signals the surface is dry and browning; it cannot mean to add fish to cold oil.
- The uncoated versionBeeton gives no flour or egg for the Jewish recipe, though the traditional dish is floured, egged and fried so the coating sets into a crisp shell that stays crisp when cold. Bare fillets fried in oil will not hold up the same way once chilled.
- Fried parsleyVery dry sprigs, lowered into the same hot fat for a few seconds until they stop spitting and turn brilliant green. Wet parsley in hot oil erupts; spin or pat it thoroughly dry first.
- YieldA pair of soles feeds four as a first course or two generously as a main. Serve the crumbed fillets straight from the pan; the oil-fried ones are meant to be cold, with lemon and buttered bread.
Sole was the prestige flatfish of the Victorian table, sturdy enough to travel by rail from the Channel ports and firm enough to fillet, which is why Beeton treats filleting as the "elegant" mode and frying whole as the everyday one. The second recipe belongs to a different tradition: cold fried fish in oil is a Sabbath dish of the Sephardi Jews who settled in London from the seventeenth century onward, cooked on Friday because no cooking could be done on Saturday, and the oil rather than butter keeps it neutral under kosher rules. Fried fish shops selling it were a familiar London sight by the 1830s, and the dish is often credited as the ancestor of the fried fish half of fish and chips, though that line of descent is traditional rather than documented. Its appearance in a mainstream English cookery book, labelled simply "Jewish Recipe" and costed like any other, shows how far it had already crossed over into general London eating.