France, then the English coast · A brasserie classic since the Belle Époque

Dover sole meunière

Name: Dover sole meunière
Yield: 4 servings
Cuisine: France, then the English coast
Ingredients: 2 Dover soles, 400 to 500 g each, skinned; Flour for dusting, salt, white pepper; 100 g clarified butter for frying, 80 g butter for the sauce; 1 lemon, a handful of flat parsley; Small boiled potatoes

A whole sole floured, fried in butter and finished with brown butter, lemon and parsley, filleted at the table by a waiter who has done it ten thousand times.

Rich6

Umami6

Fresh5

Spice1

Sweet1

The wine

A white Burgundy such as Meursault or a Chablis premier cru; the butter wants weight, the lemon wants acidity.

Sole meunière, “in the manner of the miller’s wife”, is the dish that made Julia Child fall in love with French cooking on her first day in France. The fish is dusted in flour, fried in clarified butter until golden and finished with a fresh knob of butter cooked to the colour of hazelnuts, lemon juice and parsley. The Dover sole, from the English Channel, is the noblest fish for it: firm, sweet and easy to fillet.

It is a brasserie and grand-hotel dish, and it survives wherever a maître d’ still fillets at the table: Scott’s in Mayfair, the Fischereihafen in Hamburg, Brasserie Lipp in Paris, Erno’s Bistro in Frankfurt. The theatre of the tableside filleting, the two clean fillets lifted off the bone, is half the pleasure.

At home the trick is a large pan, a sole that fits it flat and the courage to leave it alone: three to four minutes per side without moving it, then the brown butter poured over at the table. Boiled potatoes and nothing else.

The home recipe · Serves 4

Ingredients

2 Dover soles, 400 to 500 g each, skinned
Flour for dusting, salt, white pepper
100 g clarified butter for frying, 80 g butter for the sauce
1 lemon, a handful of flat parsley
Small boiled potatoes

Method

Pat the soles dry, season and dust lightly with flour, shaking off the excess.
Fry in clarified butter in a large pan for four minutes per side until golden, without moving them.
Lift onto warm plates; in the same pan cook the fresh butter to a nut-brown colour.
Add the lemon juice and parsley to the butter and pour over the fish immediately.
Fillet at the table by running a knife along the spine and lifting the fillets off the bone.