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Filet of Sole, Normande
Lift up filets from a fresh three-and-a-half-pound flounder, skin, then cut each in three even, slanting pieces. Arrange on lightly buttered sautoir with a half ounce butter, the juice of quarter of a sound lemon, a level teaspoon salt, half gill each white wine and mushroom liquor and a branch parsley. Cover fish with a lightly buttered paper, cook on range for five minutes, then set in oven for ten minutes. Remove, lift up filets with skimmer, dress on a hot dish and keep warm. Add twelve freshly opened, good-sized oysters and their liquor to pan, with twelve heads canned mushrooms, and gently boil on range for five minutes, then with a skimmer lift up oysters and mushrooms and place one of each on top of each filet. Prepare a fish quenelles, sprinkle over filets and keep hot. Mix in a small saucepan one tablespoon melted butter with two tablespoons flour, then strain fish gravy through a double cheesecloth into this pan, sharply whisk on fire till it comes to a boil, and let gently boil for five minutes. Dilute an egg yolk with a half gill cream, saltspoon cayenne, and add to sauce. Sharply mix while heating for one minute, shift pan to corner of range, briskly mix in little by little a half ounce fresh butter, pour sauce over fish and serve.
A classic sole normande built in three stages: the fillets poached in wine, the garnish cooked in the same liquor, and a velouté finished with egg yolk and butter. The hinge is the final liaison, which must not boil.
- The sauce must not boil after the eggOnce the yolk-and-cream mixture goes in, the sauce is held below a simmer — the original says one minute of sharp mixing, then off to the cool corner of the range. Boiling it will curdle the yolk and break the butter finish.
- Gills and saltspoonsA gill is half a cup, so a half gill is 4 tablespoons (¼ cup) each of white wine and mushroom liquor, and the same of cream. A saltspoon is about ¼ teaspoon.
- SautoirA straight-sided shallow pan with a lid — a modern sauté pan or a wide skillet that will hold twelve pieces of fish in one layer without crowding.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given, as was common in books of this kind. A moderate oven, somewhere around 375F, will suit the ten minutes indicated; the fish is finished when it is just opaque and flakes.
- Buttered paperThis is a cartouche: parchment cut to the pan's diameter, buttered on the underside, laid directly on the fish. It keeps the surface moist and slows evaporation of the small amount of liquid.
- Sole and flounderThe title says sole, the method says flounder, and in American kitchens of the period the words were used loosely for small flatfish. A 3½ lb whole flatfish yields somewhere around a pound to a pound and a half of fillet — four fillets cut in three gives the twelve pieces the garnish is counted for.
- Mushroom liquorThe canning liquid from the mushrooms, or the strained soaking water from dried mushrooms. Fresh mushrooms sweated in butter and their juices reserved will also do.
- Five minutes for the oystersThat is long by current practice; oysters firm up and toughen within a minute or two of heating. Lift them out as soon as the edges curl and let the mushrooms and liquor carry on reducing.
- Fish quenellesThe book assumes a forcemeat of pounded raw fish, egg white and cream, poached in small spoon-shaped dumplings — made from a separate recipe elsewhere. They are a garnish here and the dish holds up without them.
- YieldTwelve pieces of fish with twelve oysters and twelve mushrooms serves four generously, six as part of a longer menu.
Sole à la normande is generally traced to Paris restaurant cooking of the early nineteenth century rather than to Normandy itself, though the name points to the region's coastal larder: sole, oysters, mussels, shrimp, cream and butter. The classic version is a set piece of the French repertoire — poached sole masked in a cream velouté and crowned with a ring of shellfish, mushrooms and fried croutons — and it was the sort of dish a hotel chef was expected to produce on demand. The recipe's language gives away its origins in professional practice: the sautoir, the skimmer, the corner of the range for gentle heat, and the assumption that fish quenelles are already made and waiting.