Name: Sole Aux Fines Herbes
Ingredients: 1 sole, cleaned and prepared; 2 tablespoons butter; ¼ teaspoon coarse sea salt; ¼ teaspoon black pepper; Juice of 1 lemon; ⅓ cup water; 4 tablespoons butter (for sauce); 1 tablespoon chopped parsley

Why it works: Lemon and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 14,037 recipes. Both carry beta-phellandrene, which smells minty, terpene. The science ↓

Sole Aux Fines Herbes

Ingredients

Directions

Cook the sole

Place the cleaned sole in an oval dish.
Add 2 tablespoons of butter, ¼ teaspoon of coarse sea salt, ¼ teaspoon of black pepper, the juice of 1 lemon, and ⅓ cup of water.
Cook the sole over medium heat for 20 minutes, turning occasionally.

Make the sauce and serve

Prepare the sauce as for Sole au Vin Blanc.
After 20 minutes, transfer the sole to the sauce and add 4 tablespoons of butter and 1 tablespoon of chopped parsley.
Stir the butter into the sauce off the heat and pour it over the fish.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Lemon + parsleytop 1% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together14,037 recipes

Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).
Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together34,122 recipes

Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).
Pepper + lemontop 3% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together27,047 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together15,338 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Butter + parsleytop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together28,563 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-hexenal (green, leafy).

Butter and sauce barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Sole: Forms the main body of the dish, cooking into flaky, tender fish.
Butter: Adds richness and carries flavour, helping the sauce become smooth and glossy.
Lemon juice: Adds acidity that brightens the fish and sharpens the sauce.
Parsley: Adds fresh, green herbal aroma to the finished sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the butter into the sauce off the heat. Removing the pan from the heat before whisking in butter lets it emulsify gradually into a smooth sauce; on direct heat the butter can separate and turn greasy.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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Sole Aux Fines Herbes