Home › Fish › Fillets of Sole, White Wine Sauce
Fillets of Sole, White Wine Sauce
Bone three medium-sized flounders. Butter the bottom and sides of a frying pan, lay in it the fillets and pour over them two-thirds of a cupful of white wine and three tablespoonfuls of the liquor from a can of mushrooms, one-half of a teaspoonful of salt and one-quarter of a teaspoonful of white pepper. Cover, heat quickly and simmer for six minutes, then skim out the fillets, arrange them on a hot platter and keep hot over hot water. Boil down the liquor in the pan very rapidly until reduced one-half. In a sauce pan melt one heaping tablespoonful of flour and a dash of salt and pepper. Add one cupful of stock made from the bones of the fish; stir until smoothly thickened, then add the reduced wine. Beat together two eggs (yolks), and two tablespoonfuls of cream; over this pour slowly the sauce; stir until well mixed, then strain it over the fillets.
A classic vin blanc treatment written in shorthand for cooks who already knew the method. Two lines need reading twice before you start.
- The missing butterThe text as printed says "Melt one heaping tablespoonful of flour," but flour alone cannot be melted; the butter has dropped out. Melt roughly an equal amount of butter (about 1 tablespoon) and cook the flour in it a minute or two without colouring before adding the stock. Flour alone in a dry pan will scorch.
- The hinge: the yolk liaisonOnce the yolks and cream go in, the sauce must not come back to a boil or it will curdle into scrambled egg. Pour the hot sauce into the yolks in a thin stream while stirring, as directed, and if it needs any further heat hold it below 180F.
- Sole or flounderThe title says sole, the method says flounder, and in American kitchens of the period the two names were often used interchangeably for small flatfish. The recipe gives no yield or number of servings; any thin white flatfish fillet works.
- Fish stock from the framesThe cupful of stock is meant to be made from the bones you have just removed. Simmer the frames with a little onion and parsley for 20 minutes only, no longer, then strain; long-boiled fish bones turn bitter and gluey.
- Mushroom liquorCanned mushrooms and their liquor turn up regularly in cookbooks of this period. Three tablespoons of the soaking liquid from dried mushrooms, or the strained juice from mushrooms sweated in butter, does the same work with less tin.
- WineTwo-thirds of a cupful is about 160 ml. Use a dry unoaked white you would drink; the liquid is reduced by half, so anything sweet or heavily oaked concentrates unpleasantly.
- Six minutes is rightThin flatfish fillets are done when barely opaque. Six minutes at a bare simmer under a lid is generous for fillets a quarter-inch thick, and holding them over hot water while you finish the sauce continues to cook them, so err short.
- Strain and serve at onceStraining is not optional here: it catches any thread of set yolk and any lumps from the roux. Sauce the fillets immediately and serve, since a yolk-bound sauce will not hold or reheat.
Fillets of sole under a white wine sauce thickened with egg yolks and cream is the Anglo-American form of the French filets de sole vin blanc, a dish of the restaurant repertoire that found its way into household cookbooks. The structure is textbook: poach the fish in wine, reduce the poaching liquid, build a vellout he with the heat with a yolk-and-cream liaison.