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Stewed Soles with Oyster Sauce
Scrape a pair of thick soles, leaving on the skins, and steep them for a couple of hours in a little vinegar, with a dust of pepper and salt over them. Place the soles in a fishkettle with the vinegar and one pint of boiling fish stock, and let them simmer gently for twenty minutes. When cooked, place them on a hot dish, pour over some oyster sauce, and serve.
A plain English fish course as it was served in a New York hotel kitchen around the turn of the century. Two things need attention: what "oyster sauce" meant in 1896, and how long a whole sole actually wants in the pan.
- Oyster sauce is not the bottled condimentIn cookery of this period oyster sauce means blanched oysters folded into a white or butter-based sauce enriched with their liquor, sometimes finished with cream. The dark Cantonese bottled sauce would overwhelm the fish entirely.
- The fishA "pair of thick soles" means two whole fish, one per person. In American kitchens of this date "sole" frequently meant a local flatfish rather than true Dover sole; whole flounder, dab, lemon sole or petrale all stand in, though they are softer and cook faster.
- Leaving on the skinsThe dark skin of a Dover sole is tough and is normally stripped; here it is left on, which will help hold the fish together through the simmer. Scraping means removing scales and slime, not skinning. Peel the dark side off at the table if it bothers you.
- Twenty minutes is too longA whole sole poached in barely-trembling liquid is done in 8-10 minutes; the flesh should just part from the backbone. Twenty minutes gives you cotton wool.
- The vinegar steepTwo hours in vinegar firms the flesh and whitens it; acid was commonly used in handling fish of uncertain freshness. Use no more than a couple of tablespoons of a mild white wine vinegar, or the fish will taste pickled. With fish bought today the step can simply be skipped.
- Fish kettle and stockA fish kettle is a long lidded pan with a perforated lifting rack, which is how the soles come out whole. A deep roasting pan with a rack and foil cover does the same job. "Fish stock" here means a light stock of fish bones and aromatics, simmered briefly and strained.
- Poaching temperature"Simmer gently" should be read as barely moving water, around 180F. A rolling boil breaks the fillets off the frame and clouds the stock.
- Save the poaching liquidThe strained cooking liquor, reduced hard, is the natural base for the oyster sauce and ties the plate together. Oscar assumes a kitchen with sauce already standing; a home cook should build it from this.
Oscar Tschirky was never a chef — he was the Waldorf's maître d'hôtel — but the 1896 volume that carries his name collects the working repertoire of a grand New York hotel, and that repertoire was still heavily Anglo-French. Sole with oyster sauce is an English dish before it is an American one: eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English cookery paired boiled or stewed white fish with a sauce of blanched oysters in cream or melted butter, and the combination crossed the Atlantic intact. It made particular sense in New York, where oysters were cheap, local and eaten in enormous quantity from the beds of the harbour and estuary and Long Island Sound. The vinegar soak belongs to an era before reliable refrigeration, when acid was used routinely to firm and freshen fish of uncertain age.