No. 1275

Soles a la Richelieu—Fillets

Filets de Soles a la Richelieu

Raise twelve fillets from the soles; pare them their whole length and flatten; season and lay them on a buttered raised-edged baking tin with the parings and bones, half a bottle of white wine, sprigs of parsley, bay leaf, salt, and whole peppers; make a court bouillon by boiling twenty minutes; strain it, and cover the fillets, and poach them partially only; a few moments will suffice for this. Drain and range them on another clean baking sheet, covering over with a buttered paper, and let get cold under a weight, then pare them once more; strain the above stock, skim off the fat, and reduce it to a half-glaze, incorporating it slowly into a little espagnole sauce (No. 414) with the oyster and mushroom broth. When the sauce is of a sufficient succulence strain and keep it in a bain-marie. Make a pike forcemeat (No. 76). Butter some oval rings three and one-half inches by one and three-quarter inches, and a quarter of an inch thick, lay these on sheets of buttered paper, fill them with pike forcemeat; smooth nicely, and range on top the pared fillets; set the rings on a baking sheet one beside another, cover with buttered paper cut in the desirable size. This operation may be performed a few hours before dinner time, that is if the baking sheets can be kept on ice to prevent the forcemeat from souring. Fifteen minutes before serving set the sheets in a slow oven to heat the fillets, and poach the forcemeat. After taking them out lift off the paper, then with a fish skimmer remove each bed of forcemeat and fillets without disarranging them whatever, remove the rings and the paper, dress at once on a dish and surround with very hot garnishing of twelve quenelles godiveau of pike (No. 83), and two dozen channeled mushrooms (No. 118) on the other; as soon as the dishes are garnished set them into the heater. At the very last moment heat the sauce while stirring, adding butter in moderation; remove the dish from the heater, drain off the liquid and lightly cover the fish garnishings with the sauce. Send a sauce-boat of the sauce into which has been added two dozen oysters, from which the hard parts have been removed, trimmed and cut in large dice.

← No. 1274 Soles a la Normande Sole, Flounder & Turbot No. 1276 Soles a la Rochelaise →

For the Modern Kitchen

This is a full Delmonico's construction rather than a weeknight fish course: the fillets are poached, pressed, chilled, then re-heated on a bed of pike forcemeat set in oval rings. Read it as three separate jobs — court bouillon and sauce, forcemeat, final assembly — and note that the fish is deliberately underpoached the first time.

The hinge: poach only halfwayThe first poaching is meant to firm the fillets so they can be pressed and pared, not to cook them through. Sole fillets in barely simmering liquid need well under two minutes for this; the final fifteen minutes in the oven finishes them. Poach them fully at the start and the reheated fish will be dry and cottony.
"Slow oven"Conventionally read as somewhere around 300°F (150°C); Ranhofer gives no figure. The low heat sets the forcemeat gently, which is the point — the forcemeat is being poached by the oven, not baked.
Half a bottle of white wineAbout 375 ml, a generous 1½ cups. Nineteenth-century bottles ran close to modern 750 ml, so half a bottle is a safe reading. Use a dry unoaked white.
Twelve fillets from solesA whole sole yields four fillets, so this means three fish — Dover sole if you can get it, otherwise lemon sole, flounder or fluke. Skinless supermarket flounder fillets work but are thinner and more fragile; handle them cold. The recipe does not say how many rings to fill, so portioning is left open.
Pike forcemeat and godiveauRanhofer's Nos. 76 and 83 are pounded-pike forcemeat preparations; consult those numbered entries for the binding. Pike is rare at retail in the US; pollock, walleye (pike-perch) or whiting all bind well, and a modern food processor replaces the mortar entirely. Keep everything refrigerator-cold or the mixture breaks.
Espagnole and the "half-glaze"Espagnole (No. 414) is the classic brown sauce built on veal stock and brown roux; reducing the fish liquor to a half-glaze means taking it down until it coats a spoon but is not yet syrupy. A good reduced veal or brown chicken stock stands in acceptably. The "oyster and mushroom broth" is simply the liquor from shucking the oysters and the water from cooking the mushrooms — save both.
The oval rings3½ × 1¾ inches, a quarter-inch deep. Oval or round tart rings, or rings cut from foil-wrapped card, do the same job: they shape the forcemeat and are lifted away before serving. Butter them properly or the forcemeat tears.
Holding the assembled dishRanhofer says keep the sheets on ice "to prevent the forcemeat from souring" — that is a refrigerator instruction. Raw fish forcemeat should not sit at room temperature; assemble and refrigerate, and hold no more than a few hours as written.
The oystersThey go into the hot sauce at the last moment and are meant to be barely warmed through. Two dozen, hard muscle removed and diced. Simmer them and they turn to rubber; the sauce off the heat is enough.

A Little History

The recipe comes from Charles Ranhofer's The Epicurean (1894), the enormous record of what he cooked during his decades as chef at Delmonico's in New York, and it shows how thoroughly that kitchen worked in the French grande cuisine idiom — nothing stands alone, every element points to a numbered preparation elsewhere in the book. The Richelieu name attached to fish and poultry garnishes is generally traced to the eighteenth-century Duc de Richelieu, whose household was a byword for elaborate table, though in practice nineteenth-century French cooks applied the label loosely to rich brown-sauced presentations. What is genuinely of its moment is the oyster and mushroom broth folded into an espagnole: American oysters were cheap and abundant in the 1890s, and Delmonico's used them the way a modern kitchen uses stock, as a background seasoning rather than a luxury. The instruction to keep the assembled trays "on ice" is also period-specific — this is a professional kitchen with an icebox and a coal range, planning a service several hours ahead.