No. 1276

Soles a la Rochelaise

Remove the black skin from a fine sole; insert the knife on each side to separate the fillets without detaching them; lay the fish on a buttered dish, the black skin side underneath; moisten with white wine and oyster broth, season and set on top some small pieces of butter; place it in the oven to cook without coloring. Drain off the stock, add a minced onion, and reduce it to half, pouring in a little espagnole sauce (No. 414), and thickening with butter and lemon juice; strain this through a tammy; garnish around the sole with mushroom heads and the soft part of oysters; add chopped parsley, pour part of the sauce over the whole, serve the rest separately.

← No. 1275 Soles a la Richelieu—Fillets Sole, Flounder & Turbot No. 1277 Soles a la Trouville →

For the Modern Kitchen

A whole sole baked in wine and oyster liquor, then sauced with its own reduced cooking stock. The finish is the part that goes wrong: once the butter goes in, the sauce must not boil.

The fishA Dover sole of about 1 lb serves two; a large grey sole or lemon sole works the same way. Skin the dark side only, as written, and leave the white skin on so the fish holds together on the dish.
Scoring the filletsCutting down each side of the backbone without detaching the fillets lets the wine and butter reach the bone and makes the cooked fish easy to lift off in four pieces at the table. Run the knife along the spine, not through it.
Oyster brothThis is the liquor drained from freshly opened oysters, strained of grit and eked out with a little water or fish stock. Bottled clam juice is the nearest supermarket substitute, but taste it first and cut it with water if needed; most brands are saltier than oyster liquor.
"To cook without coloring"A moderate oven; on a modern dial something in the region of 350F, covered loosely with buttered paper or foil. Reckon on roughly 12 to 15 minutes for a 1 lb sole, and judge it done when the flesh parts cleanly from the backbone; the dish should never brown or the fish will be dry before the sauce is made.
Espagnole, No. 414Ranhofer's brown sauce is a veal-stock base thickened with brown roux and simmered for hours. A few spoonfuls of good demi-glace does the job here; it is a seasoning for the fish stock, not the body of the sauce.
Thickening with butterCold butter whisked in off the heat, then lemon juice. If the sauce returns to a boil it will separate. Strain first, then mount the butter.
Through a tammyA tammy is a loosely woven worsted cloth used to force sauces through. A fine chinois, or a conical strainer lined with muslin, gives the same result with less labour.
The garnish"Mushroom heads" are button caps, stems removed, stewed briefly in butter with lemon juice to keep them pale. The "soft part" of the oysters is the body with the tough adductor muscle and frill trimmed away; warm them in their own liquor for a minute at most, since anything longer turns them to rubber.

A Little History

La Rochelle is an Atlantic port on the Charente-Maritime coast, in the same waters that supply the Marennes-Oleron oyster beds, and dishes given the name a la Rochelaise in nineteenth-century kitchens commonly pair sea fish with oysters and a rich sauce, though French versions are as often built on red wine as white. Charles Ranhofer, chef at Delmonico's in New York and author of The Epicurean (1894), catalogued sole in dozens of variations, many of them named for French places and personages, on the assumption that a reader with a full brigade could reach for espagnole and glaze at any hour. Oysters were cheap and abundant in the New York markets of Ranhofer's day, and their liquor turns up throughout the book as a cooking liquid.