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Filleted Soles

Filleted soles baked with egg white, breadcrumbs, butter, lemon, and served with Italian sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and sauce are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 15,338 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Filleted Soles

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

  1. Skin and wash the soles thoroughly.

  2. Separate the meat from the bones and cut each fillet into two pieces.

Bake and serve

  1. Brush the fillets with egg white, then sprinkle with breadcrumbs and seasoning.

  2. Place in a baking dish and dot with small pieces of butter.

  3. Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes.

  4. Squeeze lemon juice over the fillets before serving with Italian sauce.

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. Butter + saucetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together15,338 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  2. Butter + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,227 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  4. Egg + lemontop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together44,316 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

  5. Lemon + saucetop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,598 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

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

Soles
Forms the main body of the dish as the fish that is cooked and eaten.
Egg white
Binds the breadcrumbs to the fish so the coating stays in place during baking.
Breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating on the outside of the fillets as they bake.
Butter
Adds fat that enriches flavour and helps the surface brown in the oven.
Lemon
Adds acidity that brightens the rich butter and mild fish flavour.

The step that matters

Bake at 400°F (200°C) for 30 minutes. Fish is delicate and dries out quickly when overcooked, so the time should be watched closely. The fillets are done when the flesh turns opaque and flakes easily with a fork.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, butter, sauce):

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Lemonthe original
  3. Vanillafits about as well
  4. Avocadofits about as well

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, butter, sauce. 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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