Sole Meunière
Prep Time 15 minutes 
Cook Time 20 minutes 
Total Time 35 minutes 
Servings 2Ingredients
For the sole
- 2 dover sole whole, skinned and trimmed
- 50 gr plain flour
- 40 gr unsalted butter
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 1 handful flat-leaf parsley
- salt and black pepper
- 1 lemon cut into wedges, to serve
For the beurre blanc
- 3 shallots very finely chopped
- 150 ml dry white wine
- 2 tbsp white wine vinegar
- 150 gr unsalted butter cold, cut into small cubes
- salt and white pepper
Instructions
1. Make the beurre blanc first
- Put the shallots, white wine, and vinegar in a small saucepan. Bring to a steady simmer and reduce until almost completely dry. You want the shallots soft and cooked down with just the faintest trace of liquid left in the pan. This takes about 10 minutes. Take the pan off the heat and let it cool for a minute.Now, over a very low heat, start adding the cold butter a few cubes at a time, whisking constantly. The butter should melt slowly into a creamy, glossy sauce rather than separating into oil. Keep adding the cubes and whisking until all the butter is incorporated. Season with salt and white pepper. Keep warm over the lowest possible heat or set the pan over a bowl of warm water. Don't let it boil or it will split.
2. Prepare the sole
- Pat the sole thoroughly dry with kitchen paper on both sides. This matters for getting a good colour in the pan. Season generously with salt and pepper. Flour the fish at the very last moment before cooking. Put the seasoned flour on a large plate, press each sole into it on both sides, then shake off every trace of excess. You want the thinnest possible coating, not a crust.
3. Cook the sole
- Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium-high heat. Add the butter and let it foam. When the foam subsides and the butter turns a light golden colour, lay the sole in the pan carefully, presentation side down. Cook without moving for 3 to 4 minutes until deep golden underneath. Slide a wide spatula carefully under the fish and turn it. Cook for a further 3 to 4 minutes, basting the fish regularly with the butter in the pan. The sole is done when the flesh feels firm and lifts cleanly from the bone at the thickest point near the head. Transfer to warm plates.
4. Finish and serve
- Squeeze the lemon juice over both fish and scatter the chopped parsley on top. Spoon the beurre blanc into a warm small bowl or jug alongside. Serve immediately with lemon wedges. Don't make anyone wait.
Notes
- Ask your fishmonger to skin and trim the sole. Most will do it without a second thought and it saves you a fiddly 10 minutes at home.
- Flour the fish at the last possible moment. If it sits for more than a few minutes the flour absorbs moisture and the coating goes claggy rather than crisp.
- Cold butter is essential for the beurre blanc sauce. It is what creates the emulsion. If the sauce starts to look oily and separated rather than creamy, take it off the heat immediately and whisk in a couple of extra cubes of very cold butter.
- If your pan isn’t wide enough to hold both fish flat, cook them one at a time. A crowded pan drops the temperature and you lose the colour on the fish.
- This dish does not wait well. Have everything ready before the fish goes in and serve straight away.
About this recipe
After mussels and fries, this is probably the second seafood dish I would order at a restaurant. The classic sole meunière has stood the test of time and is a real emblem of French cuisine. Since sole is such a delicate fish, I find that the simplest preparation is also the best, and the meunière style does exactly that: it respects the fish and highlights its flavour without masking it. I love making dover sole meunière with baked asparagus, I think both flavours go perfectly together.
Where sole meunière comes from
The word meunière means the miller’s wife, and it refers to the light dusting of flour that coats the fish before it goes into the pan. Sole was one of the most prized fish at the court of Louis XIV in the 17th century, so this is a dish with a genuinely long and prestigious history. By the 19th century it had become a standard preparation across the French kitchen, from Parisian restaurants to coastal bistros, and it’s obviously never really gone out of fashion because it’s that good.
The most famous story attached to sole meunière is Julia Child’s. In November 1948, on her very first day in France, she sat down at Restaurant La Couronne in Rouen and ordered sole meunière. “It was my first French food and I never got over it,” she said later. That one meal changed the course of her life, and through her, the way an entire generation of Americans thought about French cooking. Not bad for a simple piece of fish in butter.
The delicate sole
Classic sole meunière depends entirely on the quality of the fish, so pick the freshest and best one you can find. Dover sole has firm, sweet, delicate flesh that holds up in the pan without falling apart, and the flavour is mild enough that the beurre noisette can do its job without competing with anything.
The flour coating is worth understanding too, because it’s not a batter and it’s not a crust. It’s barely there. It just protects the delicate flesh from the direct heat of the pan and helps the surface colour evenly. That’s why you flour the fish at the very last moment. Leave it to sit and the flour absorbs moisture and goes claggy rather than crisp, and you lose that lovely golden surface.
The beurre noisette
The brown butter, or beurre noisette, is where this dish really gets its character. Butter cooked just past the foaming stage, until the milk solids start to caramelise and the whole thing smells of hazelnuts, becomes something completely different from plain melted butter. It has a nutty, almost toasty flavour that lifts the fish completely. Then the lemon juice goes in at the last second, which stops the browning immediately and cuts through the richness with a bit of acidity. It takes about thirty seconds to make and it’s one of the most satisfying sauces in French cooking. And it’s not just for savory dishes, it’s also used for the financiers cakes for example.
The beurre blanc
And then, there’s the beurre blanc which is a Loire Valley sauce that ended up on fish menus all over France, and it’s a really good pairing with sole. The story goes that a cook named Clémence Lefeuvre invented it in the late 19th century near Nantes, more or less by accident making essentially a béarnaise without the eggs. Whether that’s exactly true or not, it spread quickly and became a classic, and it’s easy to understand why.
It’s a cold butter emulsion built on a shallot and white wine reduction, so the sharpness of the vinegar and wine keeps all that butter in check, and the shallots add a gentle sweetness underneath. Made alongside the beurre noisette on the fish, the two sauces work really nicely together because they do opposite things: one is rich and nutty, one is sharp and clean.
The technically tricky part is keeping the emulsion together, and that’s why a good saucepan will make your life easier. Too much heat at any point and the butter splits into fat and liquid rather than staying creamy. You need a saucepan where you can control the temperature properly through the whole reduction, which is really what you need for a beurre blanc.
How to eat Sole Meunière
Eat this elegant dish straight away, the moment it comes out of the pan. This dover sole meuniere does not wait, so have the plates warm, have everything ready, and get it to the table while the butter is still foaming and the fish is still crisp.
Baked asparagus alongside is my favourite choice, the slight bitterness works really well against all that butter. Simple steamed potatoes or a green salad with a sharp vinaigrette are both good too. For wine, Julia Child drank a bottle of Pouilly-Fumé with her famous first sole meunière at La Couronne, and that’s still a very good call. A Chablis or a white Burgundy would work just as well. Keep it dry and keep it French!
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