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Filet of Sole, Mornay
Lift up the filets from a three-pound fresh flounder, skin, then cut each filet in three slanting, even pieces; place in a sautoir with half ounce butter, a gill white wine, branch parsley, juice of quarter of a lemon, half teaspoon salt and two saltspoons pepper. Cover fish with buttered paper, then set in oven for twenty-five minutes. Remove, and arrange filets on a baking dish. Place twelve canned mushrooms in the fish liquor, then reduce the fish gravy on the fire to half the quantity. Arrange one mushroom on top of each filet. Prepare a Mornay sauce, pour the fish liquor into the sauce, lightly mix, then pour the sauce over fish, sprinkle a little Parmesan cheese over, set in oven for ten minutes. Remove and serve.
A straightforward French restaurant preparation, but the timing is written for a much cooler and less reliable oven than yours. Read the cooking time first.
- The twenty-five minutesThin flatfish fillets in a little wine and butter are cooked through in 8-10 minutes at 350F, covered. Twenty-five minutes will leave them dry and fibrous before they ever meet the sauce, and they get another ten minutes in the oven under the Mornay.
- SautoirA shallow straight-sided sauté pan, ovenproof. Any low-sided flameproof dish that holds the pieces in one layer will serve; you want the wine to come partway up the fish, not swamp it.
- A gillHalf a cup. Two saltspoons of pepper is half a teaspoon, which is assertive for a pound or so of edible fish — a quarter teaspoon of white pepper is closer to modern taste.
- Buttered paperA cartouche: a round of parchment cut to the pan, buttered on the underside, laid directly on the fish. It traps steam without sealing the pan, so the liquor still reduces slightly.
- Sole or flounderThe title says sole and the method says flounder, which tells you what American kitchens actually had. Any firm white flatfish fillet works; a 3 lb whole flounder yields four fillets, cut into three on the bias for twelve pieces.
- Mornay sauceA béchamel finished with grated Gruyère and Parmesan, often enriched with egg yolk. Make it slightly thicker than pourable, since you are about to thin it with the reduced fish liquor.
- Canned mushroomsCommon in professional kitchens of the period, which is why the recipe assumes them ready to use. Small fresh button mushrooms, briefly cooked in butter first, are better; drain them well so they do not water down the reduction.
- The final ten minutesThis step is for glazing, not cooking. A few minutes under a hot broiler until the surface is browned and blistered gives a better result than ten minutes in the oven, which overcooks the fish underneath.
- YieldFour modest servings as a first course, or two as a main with potatoes.
Mornay sauce — béchamel with cheese, sometimes bound with yolk — is one of the small mother-sauce derivatives that structured the professional French kitchen of the nineteenth century, and it is generally traced to Paris restaurant cooking of the 1820s or 1830s; the name is often said to honor a member of the Mornay family, though no one account is documented. What is documented is the shape of the dish here: poach the fillets in wine, reduce the liquor, fold that reduction into the sauce, glaze under heat. That sequence is the backbone of dozens of nineteenth-century sole preparations, and it is why the fish liquor is never discarded. The slippage between the title and the method is the period detail worth noticing — genuine European sole did not cross the Atlantic in eatable condition, so American kitchens called their flounder sole and served it under French names, a habit that survives in the fish counters of the present day.