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Filet of Sole, Marguerite
Lift up the filets from a three-and-a-half-pound fresh flounder, carefully skin, then cut each filet into three slanting, equal pieces. Arrange on a lightly buttered baking dish, sprinkle over them three very finely chopped shallots and two finely chopped, fresh, peeled mushrooms. Season with a teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper, pour in white wine to just cover them, let come to a boil on the range, then set in oven with door open for twenty minutes.
Mix in a small saucepan a tablespoon each butter and flour, pour fish liquor in this pan, mix well until it comes to a boil, then add six freshly opened mussels and twelve cooked, shelled shrimps. Mix well, cook for five minutes, pour sauce over fish, then set in very hot oven for three minutes, remove and serve.
A shallow-poached fish dish with a wine-and-shellfish sauce, written for a coal range with a very hot oven. Two things need attention: the poaching time is far too long for thin filets, and the sauce is thinner than the classic version it is derived from.
- The hinge: poaching timeTwenty minutes will turn flounder filets into cotton wool. Cut into three pieces each, they are done in 6 to 8 minutes at 350F, when the flesh has just turned opaque. Pull them while slightly underdone, since they finish under the final blast of heat.
- "Oven with door open"Leaving the door ajar moderates a range oven that ran hot; a modern oven at 325-350F with the door shut does much the same job. The "very hot oven" at the end is around 475-500F, or a broiler for two minutes to glaze the sauce.
- SaltspoonA saltspoon is a quarter teaspoon, so two saltspoons is half a teaspoon of pepper. That is a lot for four small filets; a couple of good grinds is closer to modern taste. The teaspoon of salt is reasonable if the mussels and their liquor are unsalted.
- The fishA three-and-a-half-pound flounder yields roughly 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 lb of filet, about four portions. Any flat white fish works: lemon sole, plaice, dab, fluke. True Dover sole is firmer and can take a minute or two longer.
- White wine "to just cover"In a snug baking dish that is about 1 to 1 1/2 cups of dry white wine. Use something you would drink; the whole liquor is reduced into the sauce, so a harsh wine shows. A splash of water or fish stock can make up the volume if the dish is wide.
- The sauce needs reducingA tablespoon each of butter and flour will give only a thin sauce for a cup or more of wine. Strain the poaching liquor, boil it down by half or more, then whisk it into the roux. The classic version of this dish finishes off the heat with two or three egg yolks and a little butter, which is what makes it glaze properly under high heat.
- Mussels"Freshly opened" means shucked raw, with their liquor saved and added to the sauce. Steaming them open in a little of the wine is simpler and gives you the same liquor. Discard any that stay shut. Six is a thin garnish for four people; a dozen or more is better.
- ShrimpTwelve cooked, shelled shrimp were most likely small ones. They go in at the end only to heat through; five minutes of simmering will toughen anything larger.
The name appears to be a variant of filets de sole Marguery, the dish generally traced to the Restaurant Marguery on the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle in Paris and to its proprietor Nicolas Marguery in the later nineteenth century. Sole poached in white wine, the liquor bound into a rich sauce with egg yolks and butter, garnished with mussels and shrimp and glazed under fierce heat: it became a set piece of grand-restaurant cooking, and it turns up in American kitchens with flounder standing in for Channel sole. The missing egg yolks here suggest a version simplified for a domestic range. It sits alongside the lobster Newburg and terrapin dishes of American hotel cooking of the period.