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Recipes: Sogliole
No. 60. Sogliole in Zimino (Sole) Ingredients: Sole, onion, beetroot, butter, celery, tomato sauce or white wine.
Cut up a small onion and fry it slightly in one ounce of butter, then add some slices of beetroot (well washed and drained), and a little celery cut up; to this add fillets of sole or haddock, salt and pepper. Boil on a moderate fire and keep the cover on the fish kettle. When the beetroot is nearly cooked add two tablespoonsful of tomato purée and boil till all is well cooked. Instead of the tomato you may use half a glass of Chablis.
No. 61. Sogliole al tegame (Sole) Ingredients: Sole (or mullet), butter, anchovies, parsley, garlic, capers, eggs. a Put an ounce of butter and an anchovy in a saucepan together with a sole or mullet. Fry lightly for a few minutes, then strew a little pepper and chopped parsley over it, put in a clove of garlic with one cut, and cook for half an hour, but turn the fish over when one side is sufficiently done. A few minutes before taking it off the fire add three capers and stir in the yolk of an egg at the last minute. Do not leave the garlic in more than five minutes.
No. 62. Sogliole alla Livornese (Sole) Ingredients: Sole, butter, garlic, pepper, salt, tomatoes, fennel.
Three Italian sole dishes as recorded for English readers in 1901, with the translation problems and cooking times that came with them. Two are workable; the third is only an ingredient list.
- The "beetroot" is almost certainly chardTuscan and Ligurian zimino is built on bietola — leaf beet, chard or spinach — not the root. Sliced beetroot boiled with sole will stain the dish magenta and taste of earth; a bunch of chard leaves and stems, washed and roughly cut, is what the original dish means.
- Half an hour is far too longSole fillets are cooked in three to five minutes, a whole small sole or mullet in eight to ten. Whatever the reason for the half-hour in No. 61, hold to it and the fish will shred into the butter.
- Fish kettleNot needed here. A wide sauté pan or shallow flameproof casserole with a tight lid does the work — the point of the instruction is only that the fish steams in the vegetables' moisture rather than drying out.
- The egg yolk is the hinge of No. 61Pull the pan off the heat before stirring it in, and swirl rather than beat. It is there to bind the buttery pan juices into a light sauce; over direct heat it curdles in seconds.
- "Three capers"Read as a scant teaspoon of capers, rinsed if salted. A literal three would be undetectable.
- AnchovyAn anchovy in 1901 usually meant a whole salted fish, larger and saltier than a modern oil-packed fillet. Use two fillets, and salt the dish only at the end.
- Half a glass of ChablisThe measure is loose; a period glass is small, so read it as an ounce or two, a splash rather than a large pour. Any dry, unoaked white works; the recipe says "instead of the tomato," so it replaces the purée rather than being added alongside it.
- No. 62 has no methodThe Livornese version gives ingredients and stops — the book's numbering runs on to the next page. Sole with butter, garlic, tomato and fennel is a straightforward braise, but the instructions are simply not on this page.
- YieldEach recipe as written serves one to two: one sole or mullet, one ounce of butter, one onion. Scale by the fish.
The Cook's Decameron (1901) was Mrs W. G. Waters's attempt to teach Italian cookery to English households, framed after Boccaccio as ten days of conversation among a house party who cook and discuss recipes. That conceit may explain the terseness of entries like these: they read as notes rather than tested formulas, and the translation shows the strain — bietola becoming "beetroot" is the sort of slip such a translation invites. Zimino itself is a Tuscan and Ligurian term for a stew of fish or cuttlefish with greens; its origin is uncertain, and has been traced by some to Arabic or Persian trade vocabulary; in Florence and Livorno it is still applied to salt cod and to inkfish cooked with chard. Livorno's port cooking, with its garlic, tomato and wild fennel, was the kind of plain regional style Waters set against the French-influenced English kitchen of her day.