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Broiled Sole
Clean and skin a sole, sprinkle both sides with pepper and salt, and squeeze a small quantity of lemon juice over it; dip the sole in warmed butter, cover it well with finely grated breadcrumbs, place it on a gridiron, and broil it over a clear fire, turning it when brown on one side and browning the other. Bone an anchovy, put the flesh into a mortar with a small lump of butter, and pound it, then place it in a small saucepan with one wineglassful of white wine, and the strained juice of half a lemon, and stir it over the fire for a few minutes. When cooked, place the sole on a hot dish, pour the sauce over it and serve.
Soles, Colbert Style Skin and trim the soles and boil them. Blanch the hearts of four heads of endive, put them in a saucepan with a lump of butter, and stir over the fire until hot; then pour over one pint of stock that has been thickened with the yolk of egg beaten with a little cream, and add three or four poached eggs. Place the soles on a hot dish, pour the sauce over them, and serve.
Two hotel recipes have been run together in this entry: a crumbed grilled sole with anchovy butter sauce, and a second, briefer note for sole "Colbert style." Both assume a coal grill and a fishmonger who will skin flatfish for you.
- The fishA true Dover sole of 12-14 oz serves one; larger ones can be split. Grey sole, lemon sole, petrale or flounder all work, but they are thinner and cook faster. Ask for it gutted, skinned on the dark side and trimmed.
- Gridiron, translatedA "clear fire" means coals burned down past the smoke, no flames. A gas grill on high or an oven broiler with the rack about 4 inches from the element gives the same effect: roughly 3-4 minutes a side for a whole sole. A well-oiled fish cage or a preheated ridged pan saves the crumb coating, which will otherwise stick and tear.
- Crumbs on live fireFine dry breadcrumbs over butter will scorch before the fish is done if the heat is fierce. Press them on firmly, shake off the loose ones, and pull the fish the moment the crust is deep gold rather than waiting for colour on every edge.
- WineglassfulIn this period a wineglass is generally reckoned at about 2 fl oz, though the term is loose and some books mean twice that. Two ounces of white wine with the juice of half a lemon is the right proportion for a single sole.
- The sauce is the hingeAnchovy pounded with butter, then let down with wine and lemon, is a butter emulsion, not a reduction. Keep it below a simmer and stir constantly; if it boils it will break into oil and a grey anchovy sludge. Take it off the heat while it is still creamy. One anchovy fillet to about 2 tablespoons of butter.
- Anchovies then and nowThe instruction to bone the anchovy points to whole salted fish rather than prepared fillets. Modern oil-packed fillets come already boned; salt the fish lightly and taste the sauce before adding any more.
- The Colbert variant"Boil them" here means poach: barely trembling salted water or court-bouillon, 5-6 minutes for a whole sole, no rolling boil. The egg-yolk-and-cream liaison poured over goes in off the heat for the same reason as the butter sauce.
- EndiveThe "hearts of four heads of endive" may be Belgian endive/witloof chicory or the blanched hearts of curly endive; the text does not say. Blanch them briefly to take off the bitterness before buttering.
- ServingThe broiled sole as written is a single portion. The Colbert version, with three or four poached eggs and a pint of thickened stock, is closer to a lunch dish for four.
Sole was a prestige flatfish of the Gilded Age hotel menu, and since American waters yield no true Dover sole it was shipped in from Europe. The anchovy-butter sauce here belongs to an older English tradition of anchovy essence and anchovy butter served with grilled fish, which nineteenth-century American hotel cooking absorbed. The second recipe is the odd one: sole Colbert, traditionally said to be named for Louis XIV's minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert, is normally a boned sole opened out, crumbed, deep-fried and filled with maitre d'hotel butter, a preparation generally traced to Paris restaurant cooking of the mid-1800s. What is given instead, poached sole with buttered endive, an egg-thickened stock and poached eggs, matches no standard version, and it is a reminder that these compendia often recorded one house's shorthand rather than the canonical dish.