This eighteenth-century recipe is very good and can be made successfully (though the pieces of fish are less firm) with lemon soles, which are always cheaper, or with fillets of a large thick plaice, which must be cut into twelve pieces because of the shape of the fish. ‘To fricasey soals white,’ says Mrs Glasse, ‘cut the flesh longways and then a-cross, so that each soal will be in eight pieces.’ The fishmonger will do this. Ask for heads, skins and trimmings.