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Fried Filets of Sole, Tartare Sauce
Procure a fine fresh sole (flounder) of three pounds. Cut off the head, make an incision with a small knife down the back, open the fish and carefully lift up the filets; turn over and remove the other filets. Skin them nicely then cut each filet in two diagonally. Season with a teaspoon salt, lightly roll in flour, then in beaten egg, and gently roll in bread crumbs. Fry in boiling fat for ten minutes. Drain well, dress on a hot dish, decorate with six sections of lemon and parsley greens, and serve with a tartare sauce separately.
A straightforward deep-fried breaded fish, but the frying time as written belongs to a cooler kettle than most of us use.
- Frying time is the hingeTen minutes will dry out breaded sole filets and darken the crumbs past bitterness. Thin filets need about 2 to 3 minutes total in fat at 350-375F, until the coating is deep gold and the flesh flakes.
- "Boiling fat"Fat does not boil; the phrase means fat hot enough to bubble vigorously when food is added, roughly 350-375F. Use a thermometer and fry in two batches so the temperature does not crash.
- The fishThe book's parenthesis tells you the truth of the American market: what was sold as "sole" was usually flounder. Any flatfish filet works, as does any thin white filet, though true Dover sole is firmer and holds up better to breading.
- Filleting a whole fishA 3 lb whole flatfish yields roughly 1 to 1 1/4 lb of filet, so four filets cut diagonally give eight pieces. Buying 1 1/4 lb of ready-cut filets skips the knife work entirely.
- Breading orderFlour, then egg, then crumbs, exactly as given. Dry the filets thoroughly first or the flour turns to paste and the crust sheds in the fat. Let the breaded pieces rest ten minutes before frying so the coating sets.
- SaltA teaspoon of salt for the whole fish is about right, but season the filets themselves rather than the flour, and salt again lightly the moment they come out of the fat.
- Tartare sauceAssumed knowledge in kitchens of this period, and often given elsewhere in books of this kind: mayonnaise with chopped capers, gherkins or pickle, shallot or onion, and parsley. Make it before you start frying.
- YieldServes four as a main course, six as a first course.
Filets of sole appear in a great many general cookbooks of the early twentieth century because the technique — bone out a flatfish, breadcrumb it, fry it, send a cold sauce alongside — was among the more reliably impressive fish dishes a household cook could manage without a fish kettle or a stockpot of court bouillon. The parenthetical "(flounder)" is the honest part: genuine European sole rarely reached American fishmongers, and winter flounder, fluke and dab were sold under the borrowed name, a substitution the fish trade has never entirely abandoned. Tartare sauce is generally traced to the French sauce tartare of the nineteenth century, a mayonnaise sharpened with pickles and herbs; the name is usually explained as a reference to the Tartars, though that connection is traditional rather than documented.