Skip to main content
Main

Sole a LA Normande

Sole à la Normande is a baked sole fillet topped with oysters, mussels, mushrooms, fried smelts, and velouté sauce, served with croutons.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 14 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Sauce and smelt match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 103 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Sole a LA Normande

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the sole

  1. Clean and prepare the sole, removing the flesh from the bone on each side where the skin was removed.

  2. Butter a baking dish.

  3. Sprinkle the dish with blanched onions.

  4. Season the sole with salt and pepper.

  5. Moisten the sole with white wine.

  6. Cook the sole.

Make the sauce

  1. In a saucepan, prepare a light velouté sauce.

  2. Add mussel water and the cooking liquid from the sole.

  3. Reduce the sauce.

  4. Thicken the sauce with the egg.

Assemble and bake

  1. Arrange oysters, mussels, and mushrooms on top of the sole.

  2. Sauce the arrangement with the velouté.

  3. Bake for 5 minutes at 400°F (200°C), avoiding browning the sauce.

Garnish and serve

  1. Make croutons from buttered bread, toasted on both sides.

  2. Garnish with fried smelts and croutons that are not sauced.

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.

  1. Sauce + smelttop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together103 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. White wine + mushroomtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,765 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity).

  3. Onion + mushroomtop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,626 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).

  4. Onion + peppertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together68,474 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  5. Pepper + mushroomtop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together13,580 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

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, cooked gently in white wine and its own juices.
Egg
Thickens the sauce as it sets with gentle heat, giving it body.
Velouté sauce
Creamy base that coats the fish and shellfish, adding moisture and richness.
White wine
Moistens the fish and adds acidity that lightens the sauce's richness.
Butter
Adds fat and richness, and browns the bread for the croutons.

The step that matters

Thicken the sauce with the egg. Egg yolk thickens sauce only when gently heated; if it gets too hot it curdles and turns grainy. Keep the sauce below a simmer while whisking in the egg.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, white wine, sauce, egg, oyster, mushroom, smelt):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Horseradishfits about as well
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, white wine, sauce, egg, oyster, mushroom, smelt. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“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.

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesMushroom SoupMushroom Soup60 recipes