No. 1278

Soles, Venetian Style—Fillets

Filets de Soles a la Venitienne

Detach entirely the fillets from six fine, very thick soles; remove the black skin, beat to flatten lightly and fold each one in two, pare and place them in a sautéing pan, having it well buttered, the pointed ends laid toward the center; add a little salt and lemon juice, sauté without coloring, and when done dish up in a crown-shape, cover with a Venetian sauce (No. 555), and garnish the pointed end with a crawfish claw from which the smaller movable claw has been removed, garnish with a paper frill (No. 10); serve.

← No. 1277 Soles a la Trouville Sole, Flounder & Turbot No. 1279 Soles Baked Italian Style →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's fillets are cooked in butter in a shallow pan without browning — closer to a butter-braise than a modern sauté. Everything else is presentation.

The hinge: no color"Sauté without coloring" means moderate heat, plenty of butter, and lifting the pan off the burner if the butter starts to smell nutty. Any browning on white sole ruins the point of the dish, which is pale fish under a pale green sauce.
TimingNo time is given. Folded fillets of thick sole need only a few minutes over gentle heat; they are done when opaque at the fold, and a minute past that they weep and fall apart.
YieldSix soles yield 24 fillets — enough for eight to ten plates as a fish course. Scale down to two or three soles for four people, keeping the fillets folded so they stand up in the ring.
Buying the fishSix "fine, very thick" soles is a considerable order; grey sole, lemon sole or good flounder fillets substitute directly. Skinned fillets from the counter save you the step of removing the black skin, but ask for them thick rather than paper-thin so they hold the fold.
Venetian sauce (No. 555)The cross-reference is doing the heavy lifting. A Venetian sauce of this period is generally a velouté or allemande base sharpened with a tarragon-vinegar and shallot reduction and finished with a green herb butter. Make the sauce first; it will not wait as well as the fish.
Crawfish claws and paper frillThe claw garnish is decorative only: cook whole crawfish, pull the large claws, and snap off the small movable pincer so a clean shell remains. Paper frills are still sold for chop and cutlet service, and can be skipped without loss.
Dishing in a crownArrange the folded fillets on a round platter with the pointed ends toward the middle, so they overlap into a ring. Warm the platter — cold china will chill both fish and sauce within a minute.

A Little History

Ranhofer wrote The Epicurean (1894) out of thirty-odd years running the kitchen at Delmonico's in New York, and the book is organized like a professional's index: recipe 1278 sends you to sauce 555 and frill 10 rather than repeating itself, on the assumption that a brigade already has all three in hand. The itienne label in nineteenth-century French kitchens generally signals the green herb sauce rather than anything from Venice itself arragun and chervil butter beaten into a white sauce, the color being the whole conceit, and one of a family of tinted sauces (verte, ravigote, v itienne) that classical cooking used to distinguish otherwise near-identical dishes of poached white fish. The crawfish claw and paper frill were standard classical French service of the period: garnish that exists to be seen from across a dining room, on a dish whose actual cooking takes five minutes.