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Filets of Sole, Saute, Meuniere
Procure a fine, fresh flounder of two and a half or three pounds. Remove the filets with a knife and neatly skin them. Cut each filet in two, crosswise. Place them on a plate; season with a teaspoon salt and half teaspoon white pepper and turn well in the seasoning.
Heat one and a half teaspoons melted butter in a frying pan, arrange the filets in the pan, one beside another, and gently fry for five minutes on each side. Lift them up with a skimmer and place on a hot dish. Sprinkle a teaspoon chopped parsley over, squeeze the juice of half a sound lemon over them; add half ounce butter to the pan in which the filets were cooked, heat well on the range until a nice brown colour, pour it over the fish and serve.
A plain à la meunière handled the way a hotel kitchen would have: fillet the whole fish yourself, season, fry in butter, finish with parsley, lemon and browned butter from the same pan. Two things in the original need adjusting — the cooking time and the amount of butter.
- Timing is the hingeFive minutes a side is likely to overcook flounder fillets, which are thin. Two to three minutes on the first side and about a minute on the second should be enough; the flesh should just turn opaque and separate into flakes.
- Butter quantityA teaspoon and a half of butter will not cook eight pieces of fish without scorching. Use two to three tablespoons, and clarified butter or butter cut with a neutral oil if your pan runs hot, since milk solids burn before the fish is done.
- "Half ounce butter" for the finishThat is one tablespoon. It goes into the emptied pan and is heated until it smells of hazelnuts and turns light brown — beurre noisette. Take it off the heat the moment the colour comes; brown butter goes to black butter in seconds.
- Sole means flounderTrue Dover sole was not reliably available in American markets, so the book simply directs you to a flounder and calls the result sole. Any flatfish fillet works: fluke, dab, petrale, grey sole.
- No flour hereClassic meunière dredges the fillets in seasoned flour, which is what gives the browned crust and helps thicken the pan butter. This version skips it. If you want the usual result, dust the fillets lightly and shake off the excess just before they go in the pan.
- YieldA three-pound flounder gives roughly a pound to a pound and a quarter of trimmed fillet — two generous servings, three modest ones. Buy fillets instead if you would rather not deal with the frame, about six ounces per person.
- Equipment and seasoningA skimmer is a slotted spoon or spatula; a thin fish turner is better for fillets. White pepper is generally chosen for pale fish so no dark specks show; black pepper will serve if the look does not bother you, though the two do not taste quite the same.
- Order of assemblyHave the serving dish hot and the parsley chopped before the fish goes in the pan. The browned butter should reach the table still foaming, so the whole finish happens in under a minute.
Meunière means "miller's wife," the name generally taken as a nod to the light coating of flour that traditionally precedes the butter. Filet of sole in various dress was a staple of the grand-hotel kitchens where books like this one originated, and the substitution here of Atlantic flounder for European sole is a candid piece of American practicality: the dish carried more prestige under the French name, and the fish under it was whatever came off the boat. The finish of browned butter, parsley and lemon is the least ornamented of the sole treatments, and the one against which the sauced versions — Marguery, Normande, bonne femme — were measured.