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Fillets of Soles with White Sauce

Fillets of soles simmered with butter, spices, and lemon, served with a creamy egg yolk sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and shallot match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,019 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Fillets of Soles with White Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

Poach the fish

  1. Cut the soles into 8 fillets and place them in a stewpan rubbed with garlic.

  2. Pour the dissolved butter over the fillets, then add salt, white pepper, grated nutmeg, lemon rind, and chopped shallot.

  3. Simmer for 10 minutes.

  4. Add white wine and strained lemon juice, then simmer for 5 more minutes.

Make the sauce

  1. Beat the egg yolks with cream.

  2. Strain the fish cooking liquid.

  3. Skim off the butter.

  4. Mix the strained liquid with the cream.

  5. Stir the sauce over low heat until it thickens, then serve over the fillets.

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. Nutmeg + shallottop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,019 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Nutmeg + lemontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together11,318 recipes

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

  3. Lemon + shallottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,523 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  4. Butter + creamtop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

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

  5. Butter + white winetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,083 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

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

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the sauce as they set gently with heat, giving it a smooth, rich body.
Cream
Adds richness and body to the sauce, softening its texture.
Butter
Adds richness and fat, carrying flavour through the fish and sauce.
White wine
Adds acidity and aroma that brighten the fish and the cooking liquid.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour of the fish and sauce.

The step that matters

Stir the sauce over low heat until it thickens. Egg yolks thicken by gentle heat; if the sauce gets too hot, the yolks can scramble and curdle, leaving it grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the white pepper

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (butter, nutmeg, lemon, shallot, white wine, egg, cream):

  1. Tarragonfits better
  2. Parsleyfits better
  3. Capersfits better
  4. White pepperthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against butter, nutmeg, lemon, shallot, white wine, egg, cream. 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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