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Fried Fillets of Sole
Place a sole in a deep dish, season it with chopped sweet herbs, salt and pepper, cover it with white wine, and leave it to soak for half an hour. A few minutes before serving fillet the sole, dip the fillets in milk, dredge them well with flour, and fry them in lard. When nicely browned, place the fillets on a folded napkin laid on a hot dish and serve.
A four-line recipe that assumes a cook who can lift fillets off a flatfish in the minute before service. The one thing worth reordering is that step: everything else is straightforward shallow frying.
- Fillet first, then marinateOscar has the whole sole steeping in wine for half an hour and then being filleted "a few minutes before serving," which suits a brigade with a fish cook on the line. At home, lift the four fillets first and give them the wine and herbs for 20-30 minutes; a whole fish soaked in its skin picks up very little seasoning anyway.
- Sweet herbsPeriod shorthand for the mild culinary herbs as opposed to the bitter or medicinal ones: parsley, chervil, tarragon, thyme, marjoram. A tablespoon of chopped parsley and chervil with a little thyme is in keeping.
- What sole means hereAt a hotel of this class 'sole' probably meant imported Dover sole, though American menus of the period often applied the word loosely. Most American fish counters sell flounder, petrale or witch flounder under the name. Any thin flatfish fillet works; expect 3-4 minutes total in the pan for a fillet under half an inch thick.
- Dry the filletsThey come out of the wine wet. Pat them dry before the milk dip, or the flour turns to paste and slides off in the fat rather than setting into a crust.
- The fatLard fries beautifully and holds a clean flavour; refined lard from a butcher is still the closest thing to what Oscar used. Clarified butter, or a neutral oil, does the same job. Depth of about a quarter inch, hot enough that a pinch of flour sizzles at once, roughly 350-365F.
- The napkinA folded linen napkin on the platter was a common way of serving fried food, blotting fat and keeping the fillets from steaming on hot china. A paper-lined rack does the same and looks less like a hotel dining room.
- YieldOne sole of about 1 lb gives four fillets. The recipe gives no yield, but a single fish reads as one restaurant portion and makes a modest main course for two now. Scale by the fish.
- What to serve with itThe recipe offers no sauce. Fried fish of this kind was commonly sent out with lemon wedges and perhaps a little maitre d'hotel butter. Anything heavier defeats the crust.
Oscar Tschirky was never the chef at the Waldorf, but as maitre d'hotel from 1893 he collected and codified the kitchen's output, and his 1896 Cook Book runs to nearly a thousand pages of it. Sole occupies a great deal of that space, because a New York luxury hotel of the 1890s cooked French, and in the French repertoire sole is the fish that carries a menu. Imported European sole, shipped in ice, was part of what made it a prestige item on an American card. This particular version is unusually plain by the standards of the book, which elsewhere runs to sole with truffles, with shrimp sauce, with white wine glazes finished under a salamander. The wine steep is the interesting survivor: marinating fish briefly in wine and herbs before frying is an older habit in French cooking.