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Turban of Sole, Champeau
Lift up filets from a very fresh three-and-a-half-pound flounder. Skin and cut each filet in slanting halves. Twist up each piece in cork-screw form, place in a frying pan with half ounce butter, a gill white wine, a branch parsley, juice of quarter of a lemon and half teaspoon salt. Cover with lightly buttered paper and set in oven for twenty minutes. Remove, lift up filet and dress on a dish. Remove parsley from pan and reduce gravy to about the quantity of a tablespoon, place in a bowl, add one egg yolk, sharply mix with a whisk, then add, drop by drop, one ounce hot melted butter, sharply mixing while adding it.
Prepare half the quantity of Bordelaise sauce, pour over half the fish only and pour the other sauce over other half of fish. Sprinkle a little finely chopped parsley over and serve.
A two-sauce fish course in the Delmonico manner: the fillets are baked in wine, their liquor turned into a small butter emulsion, and half the plate finished with a red-wine Bordelaise instead. The written timing is the one thing to ignore.
- A gillHalf a cup, 4 fl oz. The half ounce of butter is one tablespoon; the ounce of melted butter for the emulsion is two tablespoons.
- Oven heatNo temperature is given at all; the instruction is simply "set in oven." A moderate oven, in the region of 350F, suits the dish.
- Twenty minutes is too longSkinned flounder fillets twisted into corkscrews are barely half an inch thick and are done in 8 to 10 minutes at 350F, when the flesh turns opaque and just parts. Twenty minutes gives dry, shredding fish.
- The buttered paperA cartouche: a round of parchment, buttered on the underside, laid directly on the fish. It traps steam and keeps the exposed corkscrew edges from drying. Foil is a poor substitute here because it does not sit close.
- The hinge is the yolkReduce the pan liquor to a tablespoon, then let it cool to warm before the yolk goes in, and add the melted butter genuinely drop by drop off the heat. Hot reduction plus a lone yolk scrambles in seconds, and once broken this small a quantity is hard to bring back.
- Sole or flounderThe title says sole, the method says flounder; in American markets various flounders were commonly sold and cooked as "sole." Any thin white flatfish fillet works, and firmer true Dover sole will want the longer end of the timing.
- Bordelaise, made separately"Half the quantity" refers to another recipe in the book. Bordelaise is a red-wine and shallot reduction finished with brown stock or demi-glace, traditionally with poached marrow. Have it made and hot before the fish goes in the oven.
- YieldA three-and-a-half-pound whole flounder yields roughly a pound to a pound and a quarter of fillet, which is two generous or three modest servings as a fish course.
The name is the giveaway to the book's pedigree: The International Cook Book was compiled by Alexander Filippini, long associated with Delmonico's in New York, and its fish chapter is full of dishes labelled with proper names in the French restaurant fashion of the late nineteenth century, a garnish or treatment christened after a patron, a colleague or a chef. "Turban" is a shape word rather than a flavour one; in classic kitchen usage it covers fillets coiled, twisted or ringed around a mould so they hold height on the plate, and here the corkscrew twist is the whole of the conceit. The trick of dressing half a plate with a pale butter liaison and half with a dark Bordelaise belongs to the same era's taste for two-tone service, when a fish course was expected to look composed as well as taste of something, and it explains why the recipe bothers to reduce a mere tablespoon of pan liquor rather than simply spooning the wine over.