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Fried Soles

Fried soles are fish fillets coated in flour and fried in lard, served with salt, parsley, and lemon.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Parsley and lemon 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 ↓

Fried Soles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Clean and skin the soles carefully.

  2. Make a cut down the spine and loosen the flesh from the bones for about three-fourths of the length.

  3. Soak the fish in milk for 10 to 15 minutes.

  4. Remove the fish from the milk and coat it with flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat enough lard or fat in a frying pan to cover the fish, but do not let it boil.

  2. Fry the fish until golden brown.

  3. Remove the fish and pat it lightly on both sides with a clean cloth.

  4. Sprinkle with coarse sea salt and serve with fried parsley and lemon slices.

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. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  2. Flour + parsleytop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together16,675 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Milk + flourtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

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

  5. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Milk and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

Soles
The main fish, whose flesh becomes flaky and tender when fried.
Milk
Softens the fish and helps the flour coating adhere evenly.
All-purpose flour
Forms a thin coating that browns during frying and crisps the surface.
Lard or fat
Conducts heat to cook the coating quickly and gives it a golden colour.

The step that matters

Keep the fat below boiling. Fat that is too hot browns the flour coating before the fish cooks through, while fat that is too cool soaks in and makes the coating greasy. Holding it hot but not boiling gives an even golden crust and moist flesh.

Swap the parsley

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (milk, flour, lemon):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Marjoramfits about as well
  3. Nutmegfits about as well
  4. Parsleythe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, flour, lemon. 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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