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Boiled Sole

A boiled sole served with toasted bread, melted butter, mashed potatoes, and wine.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Bread and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 27,232 recipes. Both carry delta-decalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Boiled Sole

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Prepare 1 cup of beef tea and add a few pieces of toasted bread.

  2. Boil the sole until cooked through.

  3. Prepare mashed potatoes as a side.

Serve

  1. Serve with plain melted butter.

  2. Enjoy with 1 glass of good old Rhine wine or Moselle, repeating daily until the bottle is finished.

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. Bread + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together27,232 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Beef + potatotop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,052 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  3. Tea + potatotop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together136 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Beef + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-acetyl-1-pyrroline (popcorn, roasted).

  5. Beef + teatop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together417 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-methyl-3-(methyldithio)furan (thiamin, meat).

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

What each ingredient does

Sole
Provides the main protein, which turns opaque and firm as it cooks through.
Beef tea
Gives the dish a savoury, brothy base in which the sole is cooked.
Toasted bread
Adds body and soaks up the broth, giving a softer, thickened texture.
Plain melted butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavour to the mild fish.

The step that matters

Boil the sole until cooked through. Overcooking boiled fish makes it dry and stringy, because proteins tighten and squeeze out moisture. Stop as soon as the flesh turns opaque and flakes easily.

Swap the potato

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (beef, tea, bread, butter, wine):

  1. Tomatofits about as well
  2. Potatothe original
  3. Capsicumfits less well
  4. Asparagusfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against beef, tea, bread, butter, wine. 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.

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