The Feasts of Autolycus: The Diary of a Greedy Woman

by Elizabeth Robins Pennell

THE SIMPLE SOLE

Have you ever considered the sole: the simple, unassuming sole, in Quaker-like garb, striking a quiet grey note in every fishmonger's window, a constant rebuke to the mackerel that makes such vain parade of its green audacity, of the lobster that flaunts its scarlet boldness in the face of the passer-by? By its own merits the sole appeals; upon no meretricious charm does it base its claim for notice. Flat and elusive, it seems to seek retirement, to beg to be forgotten. And yet, year by year, it goes on, unostentatiously and surely increasing in price; year by year, it establishes, with firm hold, its preeminence upon the menu of every well-regulated table d'hôte.

But here pause a moment, and reflect. For it is this very table d'hôte which bids fair to be the sole's undoing. If it has been maligned and misunderstood, it is because, swaddled in bread-crumbs, fried in indifferent butter, it has come to be the symbol of hotel or pension dinner, until the frivolous and heedless begin to believe that it cannot exist otherwise, that in its irrepressible bread-crumbs it must swim through the silent sea.

The conscientious gourmand knows better, however. He knows that bread-crumbs and frying-pan are but mere child's play compared to its diviner devices. It has been said that the number and various shapes of fishes are not "more strange or more fit for contemplation than their different natures, inclinations, and actions." But fitter subject still for the contemplative, and still more strange, is their marvellous, well-nigh limitless, culinary ambition. Triumph after triumph the most modest of them all yearns to achieve, and if this sublime yearning be ever and always suppressed and thwarted and misdoubted, the fault lies with dull, plodding, unenterprising humans. Not one yearns to such infinite purpose as the sole; not one is so snubbed and enslaved. A very Nora among fish, how often must it long to escape and to live its own life—or, to be more accurate, to die its own death!

Not that bread-crumbs and frying-pan are not all very well in their way. Given a discreet cook, pure virginal butter, a swift fire, and a slice of fresh juicy lemon, something not far short of perfection may be reached. But other ways there are, more suggestive, more inspiring, more godlike. Turn to the French chef and learn wisdom from him.

First and foremost in this glorious repertory comes sole à la Normande, which, under another name, is the special distinction and pride of the Restaurant Marguery. Take your sole—from the waters of Dieppe would you have the best—and place it, with endearing, lover-like caress, in a pretty earthenware dish, with butter for only companion. At the same time, in sympathetic saucepan, lay mussels to the number of two dozen, opened and well cleaned, as a matter of course; and let each rejoice in the society of a stimulating mushroom; when almost done, but not quite, make of them a garland round the expectant sole; cover their too seductive beauty with a rich white sauce; re-kindle their passion in the oven for a few minutes; and serve immediately and hot. Joy is the result; pure, uncontaminated joy. If this be too simple for your taste, then court elaboration and more complex sensation after this fashion: from the first, unite the sole to two of its most devoted admirers, the oyster and the mussel—twelve, say, of each—and let thyme and fragrant herbs and onion and white wine and truffles be close witnesses of their union. Seize the sole when it is yet but half cooked; stretch it out gently in another dish, to which oysters and mussels must follow in hot, precipitate flight. And now the veiling sauce, again white, must have calf's kidney and salt pork for foundation, and the first gravy of the fish for fragrance and seasoning. Mushrooms and lemon in slices may be added to the garniture. And if at the first mouthful you do not thrill with rapture, the Thames will prove scarce deep and muddy enough to hide your shame.

Put to severest test, the love of the sole for the oyster is never betrayed. Would you be convinced—and it is worth the trouble—experiment with sole farcie aux huîtres, a dish so perfect that surely, like manna, it must have come straight from Heaven. In prosaic practical language, it is thus composed: you stuff your sole with forcemeat of oysters and truffles, you season with salt and carrot and lemon, you steep it in white wine—not sweet, or the sole is dishonoured—you cook it in the oven, and you serve the happy fish on a rich ragoût of the oysters and truffles. Or, another tender conceit that you may make yours to your own great profit and enlightenment, is sole farcie aux crevettes. In this case it is wise to fillet the sole and wrap each fillet about the shrimps, which have been well mixed and pounded with butter. A rich Béchamel sauce and garniture of lemons complete a composition so masterly that, before it, as before a fine Velasquez, criticism is silenced.

Sole au gratin, though simpler, is none the less desirable. Let your first care be the sauce, elegantly fashioned of butter and mushrooms and shallots and parsley; pour a little—on your own judgment you have best rely for exact quantity—into a baking-dish; lay the sole upon this liquid couch; deluge it with the remainder of the sauce, exhilarating white wine, and lemon juice; bury it under bread-crumbs, and bake it until it rivals a Rembrandt in richness and splendour.

In antiquarian moments, fricasey soals white, and admit that your foremothers were more accomplished artists than you. What folly to boast of modern progress when, at table, the Englishman of to-day is but a brute savage compared with his ancestors of a hundred years and more ago! But take heart: be humble, read this golden book, and the day of emancipation cannot be very far distant. Make your fricasey as a step in the right direction. According to the infallible book, "skin, wash, and gut your soals very clean, cut off their heads, dry them in a cloth, then with your knife very carefully cut the flesh from the bones and fins on both sides. Cut the flesh long ways, and then across, so that each soal will be in eight pieces; take the heads and bones, then put them into a saucepan with a pint of water, a bundle of sweet herbs, an onion, a little whole pepper, two or three blades of mace, a little salt, a very little piece of lemon peel, and a little crust of bread. Cover it close, let it boil till half is wasted, then strain it through a fine sieve, put it into a stew-pan, put in the soals and half a pint of white wine, a little parsley chopped fine, a few mushrooms cut small, a piece of butter as big as an hen's egg, rolled in flour, grate a little nutmeg, set all together on the fire, but keep shaking the pan all the while till the fish is done enough. Then dish it up, and garnish with lemon." And now, what think you of that?