Skip to main content
Main

Fried Soles

Fried soles are fish fillets coated in egg and breadcrumbs, pan‑fried until golden and served with melted butter.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

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 ↓

Fried Soles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Skin the soles, wash, and dry them.

  2. Dip the soles in the beaten egg, then coat with bread crumbs.

Fry and serve

  1. Heat olive oil in a pan until it boils.

  2. Fry the soles until light brown, turning once.

  3. Drain on napkins and serve with melted butter.

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. Bread + olivetop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,091 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-undecenal (sweet).

  3. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Olive + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together11,887 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

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

What each ingredient does

Soles
Lean white fish that cooks through quickly and becomes flaky when fried.
Beaten egg
Binds the bread crumbs to the fish so the coating stays on during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot oil.
Olive oil
Conducts heat for frying and helps the coating brown evenly.
Plain melted butter
Adds richness and a rounded flavour to the finished fish.

The step that matters

Frying the soles. Oil that is hot enough sets the egg and crumb coating quickly, so it browns crisply rather than absorbing oil and turning soggy. Turning once helps the coating colour evenly without tearing the delicate fish.

“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.

More fried sole recipes

Fillets 20 See all 66 →

You might also like

Brown BreadBrown Bread461 recipesWhite BreadWhite Bread80 recipesBread OmeletteBread Omelette60 recipesOatmeal BreadOatmeal Bread51 recipes